The Fall of Gondolin (book)

The Fall of Gondolin is a stand-alone publication by HarperCollins devoted to the third part of J.R.R. Tolkien's Great Tales, recounting the fall of the city of Gondolin, and the successor to The Children of Húrin (2007) and Beren and Lúthien (2017). It also contains a chapter concerning the last of the "Great Tales": The Tale of Eärendel.
== Details & canon ==
The Fall of Gondolin is the third of the Great Tales, but was the first that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, and is the second most complete of the tales (after The Children of Húrin; and is less fractured and more continuous than the materials comprising Beren and Lúthien).
:...I have arranged the content of the book in a manner distinct from that in Beren and Lúthien. The texts of the Tale appear first, in succession and with little or no commentary. An account of the evolution of the story then follows, with a discussion of my father’s profoundly saddening abandonment of the last version of the Tale at the moment when Tuor passed through the Last Gate of Gondolin.
The Fall of Gondolin contains the original version as previously printed in The Book of Lost Tales Part Two, notes from Tolkien's earliest text on the story, a short piece of an unfinished follow up story Turlin and the Exiles of Gondolin, The story as told in the Sketch of the Mythology, the story as told in the Quenta Noldorinwa, the last version called Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin (previously published in Unfinished Tales), and the letters and notes related to the final manuscript. Finally there several chapters of how the exiles of Doriath and Gondolin lead to the Great Tale of Eärendel, these include the chapter called "Conclusion", followed by "Conclusion of the Sketch of the Mythology" and "Conclusion of the Quenta Noldorinwa".
Previous sources which cover this major First Age event are the chapters "The Fall of Gondolin" of The Book of Lost Tales Part Two and "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin" in The Silmarillion, which both tell of the founding of the Elven city of Gondolin (built in secret by Turgon and his people), of the arrival Tuor, a prince of the Edain, of the betrayal of the city to Morgoth by Turgon's nephew Maeglin, and of its subsequent destruction by Morgoth's armies.The Silmarillion, Quenta Silmarillion, Chapter XXIII: "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin" There is also a unfinished (consisting of around 130 lines) and unpublished poem: The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin.The History of Middle-earth, Vol. III: The Lays of Beleriand, II. "Poems Early Abandoned" Only a few brief fragments were included in The Lays of Beleriand (the bulk not published as Christopher Tolkien explained its closeness to already published Tale in Lost Tales Part Two). 
Some of this material such as the The Lay of the Fall of Gondolin was not included in this edition of the The Fall of Gondolin, and thus remains unpublished (other than what is related in The Lays of Beleriand). A List of Names is included in the extras, though it is unassociated with the version previously published in Parma Eldalamberon.
The Lost Tales chapter goes more in-depth than the account in The Silmarillion, telling notably in detail of Tuor's and Ecthelion's feats in battle, and mentioning every captain of the Houses of the Gondolindrim.
== Contents ==
;ContentsGoogle Books - [https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Fall_of_Gondolin/LQBVDwAAQBAJ The Fall of Gondolin By J. R. R. Tolkien
* Cover
* Title Page
* Copyright
* Dedication
* List of Plates
* Preface
* List of Illustrations
* Prologue
=== THE FALL OF GONDOLIN ===
* The Original Tale
* The Earliest Text
* Turlin and the Exiles of Gondolin
* The Story Told in the Sketch of the Mythology
* The Story Told in the Quenta Noldorinwa
* The Last Version
* The Evolution of the Story.
* Conclusion
* The Conclusion of the Sketch of the Mythology
* The Conclusion of the Quenta Noldorinwa
* Footnotes
* List of Names
* Additional Notes
* Glossary
* Map of Beleriand
* The House of Beor
* The Princes of the Noldor
* Works by J.R.R. Tolkien
=== List of Plates ===
*Swanhaven
*:‘They attempt to seize the swan-ships in Swanhaven, and a fight ensues’
*Turgon Strengthens the Watch
*:‘he caused the watch and ward to be thrice strengthened at all points’
*The King's Tower Falls
*:‘the tower leapt into a flame and in a stab of fire it fell’
*Glorfindel and the Balrog
*:‘that Balrog that was with the rearward foe leapt with great might on certain lofty rocks’
*The Rainbow Cleft
*:‘he should be led to a river-course that flowed underground through which a turbulent water ran at last into the western sea’
*Mount Taras
*:‘he saw a line of great hills that barred his way, marching westward until they ended in a tall mountain’
*Ulmo Appears Before Tuor
*:‘Then there was a noise of thunder, and lightning flared over the sea’
*Orfalch Echor
*:‘Tuor saw that the way was barred by a great wall built across the ravine’
=== List of Illustrations ===
*Tuor strikes a note on his harp
*Twor descends into the hidden river
*Isfin and Eöl
*Lake Mithrim
*The mountains and the sea
*Eagles fly above the encircling mountains
*The delta of the River Sirion
*Carved figurehead of Glorfindel in front of Elven-ships
*Ran searches the Hill of Slain The entrance to the King's house
*Tuor follows the swans to Vinyamar
*Gondolin amid the snow
*The Palace of Ecthelion
*Elwing receives the survivors of Gondolin Eärendel's heraldic symbol above the sea
== Background ==
J.R.R. Tolkien began writing what would become "The Fall of Gondolin" in 1917, in an army barracks on the back of a sheet of military marching music.John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, pg. 214 It is the first traceable, substantial story he wrote of the Middle-earth legendarium.
Because Tolkien was constantly revising his First Age stories, the narrative he wrote in 1917 (published posthumously in The Book of Lost Tales Part Two) remains the only full account of Gondolin's fall. The narrative in The Silmarillion was the result of the editing by his son Christopher of various different sources, and is briefer.
A partial new version of "The Fall of Gondolin" was published in the Unfinished Tales under the title "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin". Actually titled "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin", this narrative shows a great expansion of the earlier tale. It can be surmised from this text that Tolkien would have rewritten the entire story, but for reasons that are not known he abandoned the text before Tuor actually arrives in the city. For this reason Christopher Tolkien re-titled the story before including it in Unfinished Tales.
== Translations ==
Foreign Language 	Translated name
Arabic 	سقوط غوندولين
Bulgarian Cyrillic 	Падането на Гондолин
Catalan 	La caiguda de Gondolin
Chinese 	貢多林的陷落
Croatian 	Pad Gondolina
Dutch 	De Val van Gondolin
Esperanto 	La Falo de Gondolin
Estonian 	Gondoliini langus
Finnish 	Gondolinin tuho
French 	La Chute de Gondolin
Galician 	A caída de Gondolin
German 	Der Fall von Gondolin
Greek 	Η Πτώση της Γκόντολιν
Hebrew 	נפילת גונדולין
Hungarian 	A Gondolin bukása
Indonesian 	Jatuh Gondolin
Italian 	La caduta di Gondolin
Kannada 	ಗೊಂಡೊಲಿನ್ ಪತನ
Kazakh 	Гондоленнің құлдырауы (Cyrillic) Gondolenniñ quldırawı (Latin)
Lithuanian 	Gondolino kritimas
Macedonian Cyrillic	На Падот на Гондолин
Malagasy 	Ny fianjeran'i Gondolin
Malaysian 	Kejatuhan Gondolin
Marathi 	गोंडोलिनचे पतन
Polish 	Upadek Gondolina
Portuguese 	A Queda de Gondolin
Romanian 	Căderea Gondolinului
Serbian 	Пад Гондолина (Cyrillic) Pad Gondolina (Latin)
Spanish 	La caída de Gondolin
Ukrainian Cyrillic 	Падіння Ґондоліна
== References ==
== External links ==
Category:2018 publications
Fall of Gondolin
Category:Great Tales publications
Category:Middle-earth source literature
Category:Novels
Category:Primary literature
de:Der Fall von Gondolin (Buch)
pl:Upadek Gondolinu (książka)
tr:Gondolin'in Düşüşü (Roman)