The Lost Road and Other Writings (The History of Middle-Earth, Vol. 5) |
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
At the end of the 1937 J.R.R. Tolkien reluctantly set aside his now greatly elaborated work on the myths and heroic legends of Valinor and Middle-earth and began The Lord of the Rings. This fifth volume of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, completes the presentation of the whole compass of his writing on those themes up to that time. Later forms of the Annuals of Valinor and the Annals of Berleriand had been composed, The Silmarillion was nearing completion in a greatly amplified version, and a new map had been made; the myth of the Music of the Ainur had become a separate work; and the legend of the Downfall of Numenor had already entered in a primitive form, introducing the cardinal ideas of the World Made Round and the Straight Path into the vanished West.
Closely associated with this was the abandoned time-travel story, The Lost Road, which was to link the world of Numenor and Middle-earth with the legends of many other times and peoples.
A long essay, The Lhammas, had been written on the ever more complex relations of the languages and dialects of Middle-earth; and an etymological dictionary had been undertaken, in which a great number of words and names in the Elvish languages were registered and their formation explained - thus providing by far the most extensive account of their vocabularies that has appeared.
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Customer Reviews:
• Overview Of The History Of Middle-earth Series
06 December, 2008
Collections of an author's work are often confusing, particularly when what the author has created is as complex as Tolkien's writings. Here's an overview of the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth, which was edited by his son Christopher Tolkien. Hopefully, it will help you select which book or books to buy.
Keep something in mind. In the U.S. Houghton Mifflin publishes Tolkien's authorized works in hardback and trade paperback editions, while Ballantine Books publishes them as cheaper mass-market paperbacks. For some reason, Ballantine doesn't always make it clear that some of their titles are part of the same History of Middle-earth series as those published by Houghton Mifflin. If the title is the same, the content is the same. Which you buy depends on your taste in books and finances. I have copies of both.
GROUP ONE, VOLUMES I - V, EARLY TALES
These five volumes deal primarily Tolkien's writings before the publication of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55). In them, Tolkien was struggling as a still unknown author to create his first history of Middle-earth.
Vol 1 & 2, The Book of Lost Tales Part 1 ( 1983) & 2 (1984). The Book of Lost Tales was written during the 1910s and 1920s. Wikipedia describes it this way: "The framework for the book is that a mortal Man visits the Isle of Tol Eressëa where the Elves live. In the earlier versions of the `Lost Tales' this man is named Eriol, of some vague north European origin, but in later versions he becomes Ælfwine, an Englishman of the Middle-ages."
Vol. 3, The Lays of Beleriand (1985). These are collections of poems, many of them incomplete, written between the 1920s and the late 1940s.
Vol 4, The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986). As you might guess by the title, in this book Christopher describes how his father shaped his vision of Middle-earth from the primitive The Book of Lost Tales to early versions of The Silmarillion. This theme is taken up again in volumes X and XI.
Vol 5. The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987). Along with other writings this volume includes Tolkien's drafts of a tale about time travel. Wikipedia describes it this way: "The Lost Road itself is a fragmentary beginning of a tale, including a rough structure and several intiguing chunks of narrative, including four entire chapters dealing with modern England and Numenor, from which the entire story as it should have been can be glimpsed. The scheme was of time-travel by means of 'vision' or being mentally inserted into what had been, so as to actually re-experience that which had happened. In this way the tale links first to Saxon England of Alfred the Great, then to the Lombard Alboin of St. Benedict's time, the Baltic Sea in Old Norse days, Ireland at the time of the Tuatha's coming (600 years after the Flood), prehistoric North in the Ice Age, a 'Galdor story' of Third-Age Middle-Earth, and finally the Fall of Gil-Galad, before recounting the prime legend of the Downfall of Numenor/Atlantis and the Bending of the World. It harps on the theme of a 'straight road' into the West, now only in memory because the world is round."
GROUP TWO, VOLUMES VI - IX, LORD OF THE RINGS
If you or the friend you're buying for is primarily interested in the LOTR, then these four volumes are the books to have. Just keep in mind that you'll find in them many unfinished plots that may or may not fit well into LOTR. Tolkien was a perfectionist, always trying to improve plots and fill in details. These are his drafts.
Vol. 6, The Return of the Shadow (The History of The Lord of the Rings v. 1, 1988). Describes the initial stages of writing LOTR and covers the first three-fourths of The Fellowship of the Ring (until the Mines of Moria).
Vol. 7, The Treason of Isengard (The History of The Lord of the Rings, v. 2, 1989). Covers from the Mines of Moria until Gandalf meets Théoden about one-fourth of the way into The Two Towers.
Vol. 8, The War of the Ring (The History of The Lord of the Rings, v. 3, 1990). Continues the tale up to the opening of the Black Gate not quite three-quarters of the way through The Two Towers.
Vol. 9, Sauron Defeated (The History of The Lord of the Rings, v. 4, 1992). Completes the tale and includes an alternate ending in which Sam answers questions from his children. There is also a much shortened version of Vol. 9 called The End of the Third Age, which leaves out material that isn't related to LOTR.
GROUP THREE, VOLUMES X - XI, THE SILMARILLION
Just as The Hobbit created a public demand for more tales about hobbits, The Lord of the Rings created a demand for more tales about Middle-earth. To meet that demand, Tolkien struggled to reconcile and adapt many of his earlier tales to the historical framework made well-known by his two published works. He never completed those labors, so it was left after his death to his son Christopher to do so in The Silmarillion (1977). If you or a friend is interested in knowing more about The Silmarillion, these two volumes may be of interest.
Vol 10, Morgoth's Ring (The Later Silmarillion, v. 1, 1993). Contains material from earlier (1951 and later) drafts of The Silmarillion. Wikipedia notes that: "The title of this volume comes from a statement from one of the essays: 'Just as Sauron concentrated his power in the One Ring, Morgoth dispersed his power into the very matter of Arda, thus the whole of Middle-earth was Morgoth's Ring.'"
Vol. 11, The War of the Jewels (The Later Silmarillion v. 2, 1994). Addition material about the earlier drafts of The Silmarillion. Includes information about the origin of the Ents and Great Eagles.
GROUP FOUR, VOLUME XII AND INDEX, WRAP-UP
Vol. 12, The People's of Middle-earth (1996). Contains material that did not fit into the other volumes. The most interesting include additional appendices like those at the back of LOTR, essays on the races of Middle-earth, and about 30 pages of a sequel to the LOTR called The New Shadow. It was set a century after the LOTR. Tolkien abandoned the tale as too "sinister and depressing."
The History of Middle-earth Index (2002) is an index of all twelve volumes.
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Keep in mind that books in The History of Middle-earth are nothing like reading The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. What J. R. R. Tolkien wrote is often fragmentary and unpolished rough drafts, while what Christopher wrote is literary scholarship, concerned more with sources and texts than plots. If you or the friend you are buying for is more interested in understanding LOTR better, you might be happier with a reference works such as:
Karen Fonstad's The Atlas of Middle-Earth (Revised Edition)
Robert Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth
Or my own detailed, day-by-day chronology Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings
All three will give you a richer, deeper understanding of LOTR.
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If you're interested in reading books with the same flavor as Tolkien, you might consider reading William Morris, a once well-known writer who influenced Tolkien. For tales like the warriors of Rohan, see his The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains. For arduous quest journeys much like Frodo and Sam's quest to be rid of the Ring, read his The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End. The four tales have been collected into two inexpensive volumes:
More to William Morris: Two Books that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien-The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains
On the Lines of Morris' Romances: Two Books That Inspired J. R. R. Tolkien-The Wood Beyond the World and the Well at the World's End
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I hope this helps you to select wisely based on your own interests. You can save some money by buying collections of The History of Middle-earth in multi-volume sets. You can also save by buying the Ballantine mass-market paperback instead of the Houghton Mifflin trade paperback edition, although the former may have smaller type and you may need to use both hands to keep it open while you read.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Important Linguistic Text And Map, Numenor Story
21 January, 2007
`The Lost Road' is the fifth volume in Christopher Tolkien's editions of his father, J. R. R. Tolkien's unpublished works, dedicated mostly to the history of the three ages which preceded the events chronicled in `The Hobbit' and `The Lord of the Rings', which marked the end of the Third Age of Middle Earth. In some ways, `The Lost Road' represents a rise in the amount of `interesting' material, after the relatively dry material, especially the poetry in `The Lays of Beleriand' and `The Shaping of Middle Earth'.
This is especially true in that it wraps up the material on what I consider the most interesting events in the Middle Earth `prehistory', the story of Numenor and its fall, plus some excellent notes on the languages of Middle Earth.
We read here that the story of Numenor was, as it is probably obvious to most, a recreation of the Atlantis myth. It always struck me as odd that while Numenor was so obviously an echo of a Greek myth that the Numenorean names and language is so clearly patterned after Arabic. Note the prominence of the `Ar-` prefix, later changed to `Tar-`, so similar to the Arabic article, `Al-` seen in so many Spanish names such as the Alhambra and Alcatraz.
The story of Numenor began in an agreement with Tolkien's Oxford pal, C. S. Lewis for each to write a science fiction story. Lewis' result is his `Out of a Silent Planet' trilogy. Tolkien's effort became subsumed into his history of Middle Earth as the most important event in the First Age.
If you are an avid fan of Tolkien's linguistics, then this volume is a `must have', as it includes Tolkien's own dictionary of his various linguistic constructions. If your love of Tolkien lies more with the mythology, this book is slightly less interesting, as the central `The Lost Road' tale is actually a weak `time travel' story', since Lewis chose space travel as his theme, Tolkien was left with the other great Sci Fi theme.
Of course, if you must have every volume, you can feel satisfied that the next four volumes are probably the most interesting of all, as they represent early drafts of Tolkien's greatest work, `The Lord of the Rings'.
- Amazon Customer Review
• If You Read The First Four In The "history", Then Set Your Expectations Higher Than The Last Book
12 March, 2006
past reviewers keep saying these books are really hard. Now I graduated high school but have started college 3 different times and yet will have to start a 4th because certain parts of it are just too hard for me. I am actually kind of ashamed of myself because all of my friends are WAY ahead of me.
Sorry to get off topic up above there, and maybe it is my passion for these books after discovering the lord and the silmarillion, BUT THESE BOOKS ARE NOT DIFFICULT. You may have to be a big time geek like me to read every single word of this and to fully follow the evolution of these early writings. ANYBODY who was a fan of lotr, silmarillion and the first 4 of the "history", ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK.
The book is billed as having the lost road in it. While it does have it, it is certainly not one of tolkien's strongest works. Some info on sauron from a modern day point of view is nice to read.
The other low point of this book is the etymology stuff, but though I say a low point, there are no real low points in this book, just some parts that are lower than others. I have no desire to learn elvish languages, at least before I learn at least one other real one, but looking through the extremely short dictionarywas very interesting just for reading.
Honestly, this book did go a little bit over my head, but not too many people can actually write and speak elvish and other tolkien languages without first knowing finnish, old english, irish, etc., though the only part of the book that didn't make any sense to me, still ver neaty to look at.
- Amazon Customer Review
• One Of The Better Home Books For Elvish Language Study
01 June, 2008
I agree with most of the reviews written below, but wanted to highlight the extreme utility of this book to the study of Tolkien's Elvish languages. This book contains "The Etymologies," which traces numerous words in these languages to their primordial roots. Written in the 1930s, some two decades before the completion of the Lord of the Rings, "The Etymologies" document the relationship between Quenya and Noldorin (among a number of other, less well attested Elvish languages), two languages which would (as later Quenya and Sindarin) reappear in a somewhat altered form in the Lord of the Rings.
So, in addition to being an integral part of the 12-volume HoME series, this book also stands out as a key reference for students of Tolkien's invented languages.
- Amazon Customer Review
• A Unique Contribution . . .
05 February, 2007
. . . to the continued "The History of Middle-Earth" series.
In "The Lost Road", Christopher Tolkien brings his father's mythology to the point where writing "The Lord of the Rings" became a priority. Later developments in "The Silmarillion" are published later in this series.
What makes "The Lost Road" unique is the connection between it and "Out of the Silent Planet" by CS Lewis. Tolkien and Lewis had agreed to write a pair of novels, with Tolkien exploring time travel, and Lewis exploring space travel. While Lewis completed "Out of the Silent Planet" (and two sequels), Tolkien never finished "The Lost Road". This volume gives us hints of what "might have been".
Again, thanks is due to Christopher for his labor of love, allowing the rest of us to delve more deeply into the lore of Middle-Earth.
- Amazon Customer Review
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