page_title: The Children of Húrin
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: The Children of Húrin / Reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Artist Alan Lee signs The Children of Hurin at Forbidden Planet, London Français&#160;: Alan Lee dédicace Les Enfants de Húrin à Londres
context_page_description: The Children of Húrin is an epic fantasy novel which forms the completion of a tale by J. R. R. Tolkien. He wrote the original version of the story in the late 1910s, revised it several times later, but did not complete it before his death in 1973. His son, Christopher Tolkien, edited the manuscripts to form a consistent narrative, and published it in 2007 as an independent work. The book contains 33 illustrations by Alan Lee, eight of which are full-page and in colour. The story is one of three "great tales" set in the First Age of Tolkien's Middle-earth, the other two being Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin.
context_section_description: The initial reviews following the publication of The Children of Húrin were mostly positive. Likening it to a Greek tragedy, The Washington Post called it "a bleak, darkly beautiful tale" which "possesses the mythic resonance and grim sense of inexorable fate". A positive review was carried by The Independent (UK) ("dry, mad, humourless, hard-going and completely brilliant"). Bryan Appleyard of The Sunday Times (UK) set The Children of Húrin above other writings of Tolkien, noting its "intense and very grown-up manner" and "a real feeling of high seriousness". Maurice Chittenden of The Sunday Times, said that "it may merit an X-certificate" due to the amount of violent deaths. Philip Hensher in The Daily Telegraph said there were many reasons to detest the book (and enumerated them), but relents for its powerful final episode "in which an incestuous passion and a battle with a great dragon enfold each other". He disagrees with Tolkien why his writing had power: Tolkien thought it was because it was linked to antiquity; Hensher, for its modernity, with imperialism not feudalism, and an elf capable of evil.
  The book received negative reviews from the Detroit Free Press ("dull and unfinished"), Entertainment Weekly ("awkward and immature", "impenetrable forest of names ... overstuffed with strangled syntax"),, and The Guardian ("a derivative Wagnerian hero ... on a quasi-symbolic quest"). 
  Other critics distinguished two audiences. Tom Deveson of The Sunday Times said that "although JRR Tolkien aficionados will be thrilled, others will find The Children of Hurin barely readable". Kelly Grovier from The Observer, on the other hand, stated that it "will please all but the most puritanical of his fans", referring to the scepticism about Christopher Tolkien's involvement. Jeremy Marshall of The Times generally echoed: "It is worthy of a readership beyond Tolkien devotees," although he thought it was flawed ("occasionally the prose is too stilted, the dialogue too portentous, the unexplained names too opaque"). He also presupposed that: "In The Children of Húrin we could at last have the successor to The Lord of the Rings that was so earnestly and hopelessly sought by Tolkien’s publishers in the late 1950s."
caption: Illustrator Alan Lee signing copies of The Children of Húrin
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