The Unfinshed Tales

***Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth*** is a collection of stories and essays by J. R. R. Tolkien that were never completed during his lifetime, but were edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1980. Many of the tales within are retold in *The Silmarillion*, albeit in modified forms; the work also contains a summary of the events of *The Lord of the Rings* told from a less personal perspective.

## The Unfinshed Tales

of Númenor and Middle Earth

Cover of the first edition. It features Tolkien's drawing of a Númenórean helmet.

## Overview

Unlike *The Silmarillion*, also published posthumously (in 1977), for which the narrative fragments were modified to connect into a consistent and coherent work, the *Unfinished Tales* are presented as Tolkien left them, with little more than names changed (the author having had a confusing habit of trying out different names for a character while writing a draft). Thus some of these are incomplete stories, while others are collections of information about Middle-earth. Each tale is followed by a long series of notes explaining inconsistencies and obscure points.

As with *The Silmarillion*, Tolkien's son Christopher edited and published *Unfinished Tales* before he had finished his study of the materials in his father's archive. *Unfinished Tales* provides more detailed information about characters, events and places mentioned only briefly in *The Lord of the Rings*. Versions of such tales, including the origins of Gandalf and the other Istari (Wizards), the death of Isildur and the loss of the One Ring in the Gladden Fields, and the founding of the kingdom of Rohan, help expand knowledge about Middle-earth.

The commercial success of *Unfinished Tales* demonstrated that the demand for Tolkien's stories several years after his death was not only still present but growing. Encouraged by the result, Christopher Tolkien embarked upon the more ambitious twelve-volume work entitled *The History of Middle-earth* which encompasses nearly the entire corpus of his father's writings about Middle-earth.

## Contents

### Part One: The First Age

* "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin"
* "*Narn i Hîn Húrin* (The Tale of the Children of Húrin)" is a long story of what happened to Húrin and his children Túrin Turambar and Nienor, after Húrin was cursed by the Dark Lord Morgoth. The story elaborates on what is told of these characters in the published *Silmarillion*, starting with the childhood of Túrin, continuing through the captivity of his father in the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, and Túrin's exile in Doriath, to Túrin's time in Nargothrond, his incestuous relationship with his sister Nienor, and ultimately ending with suicide by his sword after killing the dragon who caused much of his problems. A shorter version is given in *The Silmarillion* as the chapter "Of Túrin Turambar". A complete version is published in the 2007 *The Children of Húrin*.

### Part Two: The Second Age

* "A Description of the Island of Númenor"
* "Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife"
* "The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor"
* "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn"

### Part Three: The Third Age

* "The Disaster of the Gladden Fields"
* "Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan"
* "The Quest of Erebor" has Gandalf narrate to Frodo Baggins how and why he arranged for the retaking of the Lonely Mountain (*Erebor* in Sindarin), resulting in the adventure told in *The Hobbit*. It was written long after that book had been published, sometime after Tolkien had the page proofs for *The Fellowship of the Ring*.
* "The Hunt for the Ring"
* "The Battles of the Fords of Isen"

### Part Four

* "The Drúedain"
* "The Istari"
* "The Palantíri"