Hello and welcome to Talking Talking. Today we're going to look at a book that's just been released or an edition of a book that's just been released and this is Unfinished Tales. So before we get down to it, I'll give a quick history on the book itself and what it is. So it was released, this is the old copy that I've got. It was released in 1980 by George Allen and Ann Wynne and the idea with this was after the Silmarillion had been published in 1977. Christopher Tolkien in the process of making that, realized he'd still got a load of his father's material that was still unpublished. So he kind of thought there may be a market for that. And as a consequence, he put a number of those stories into this which tied it up some of those loose ends and provided some narratives. So that's where the book came about. Because of its success, this kind of led to the History of Middle-earth series, which is the 12 book series, which kind of ties in that the entire history and chronology of Tolkien's work. But this was really the prototype for that. In an ideal world, this would never have existed and it would have become, all the stories that are inside of it, would have become part of the history of Middle-earth. But that's really what this was. It was a prototype for that. So that was the original one, 1980, published. It's been reprinted over the years. The other copy I've got is this one, which has quite a nice cover on there. But it's never been illustrated before. And then we learned that this year, after the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, that illustrated edition was published, which I did in the video a few months ago, we now get this one. So should we have a look? Yeah, let's have a look. Okay, so first of all, it's quite a big book, quite a lot of pages to it, just because there's quite a lot in here. You can see the cover there. Now, what's different about this one is the edition earlier, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit was illustrated by Alan Lee. Anyways, this one has got illustrations by Alan Lee, John Howe and Ted Nasmith. So Alan Lee, John Howe both worked on the films. So probably seeing quite a lot of their work around Ted Nasmith, maybe not quite as well known because he didn't work on the films. But he's published, he's had some of his paintings publishing right at the summary, and there's a copy of that with his illustrations on. And I think I've got a video with that as well, if you have a look around. But yeah, so this is the book. Okay, so that's the cover. Really nice piece on the back as well there. Now, if you have seen like those editions of Lord of the Rings that were published earlier this year, that box set, it's very similar to that in the, the, here's the title page. Hopefully you can see that. Okay, but you see how the colors there. It's got the title color. So we've got that. Other interesting things. Here's the copyright page for it. And hopefully you can see that. But if you notice on there, it says this edition was first published by, is it Unwin Hyman or something in 1980, whereas the original publishers were George Allen and Unwin. So that was spotted already. So I guess that'll be changed and amended for the next edition. But then, you know, so you probably want to know about the pictures, which is the main draw of this. So here's a list of the plates that are in here. According to this, is 18 in total? Okay, so we can see a list there. I won't go through each of them, because I know it doesn't come out that well on the camera. But I will give you an idea. So there's an example. That's just a sketch for the first stage, one of the chapters there. Then we get things like this. I'd say because you're going back into the first stage and second stage, there's more of the, more of the fantasy element, I suppose, with a lot of these stories is in the Lord of the Rings. So I've maybe got some more license there to do. This must be a Ted Nasmuth picture. It's quite distinctive his style, it's actually my favourite of the authors. So with 500 pages in here and what, 2019, 20 illustrations, it's not going to be quite as, as many pictures in here per page as you've seen with some of the previous editions. But it's certainly a nice, nice book, as I say, it's well bound. You've got a ribbon in there. The front piece is really nice, so there's the inside of the dust jacket and then we've got the bit map there. Okay, there's the book itself. So nice colour, it's a bit like. I'd say very similar. It's nice that it's going to sit in the same style as a lot of those other books, and I'll stick a picture up of them all together to give you an idea. But this is really nice. I would definitely recommend it. Well, also we've got to say about it. Not that much really, it's it's good to spot on, mate. I've got no complaints to the writer, I think it's it's crying out now for one of these to be done with some really nice, I suppose. And then if that's good, why did you go from there? History middle earth, I want to for each of these. Maybe. Okay, good. I don't want to prattle on all day, no, I want that. So yeah, hopefully that's giving you an idea. So what I will say as well is there's another version of this coming out, which is a deluxe edition, sumptuous deluxe edition. I might have all of it, but it's not arrived yet. So hopefully it'll arrive in the next couple of days. When it does, I will do a video and show you what that one's like as well. I think that's it for now. So this has been look out there. Our Tolkien's unfinished tales, illustrated edition. If you enjoyed this like and subscribe, if you want. Thanks for watching. Bye.