The Silmarillion
Price: $250.00
Hard Cover. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. First Edition. About Fine / Dust Jacket Included.
Illustrated with a map facing p. 120, and fold-out map to rear. First edition, export issue, mixed state, with the uncorrected error of no period after Fëanor on p. 330, line 4, but with "and" italicization error corrected on p. 352, line 39. With identifiers for the export variant, including no price on dust jacket flap, and William Clowes & Sons imprint on copyright page. The export and domestic variants were published practically concurrently, with the export variant technically preceding the domestic. Publisher's blue cloth, with spine lettered in gilt; in its original purple pictorial dust jacket, with emblems to front and rear panels designed by J. R. R. Tolkien, lettered in red and white. About fine book, with a strip of toning to head of spine, bump to top right corner of front board, a 4-inch closed tear and some creasing to fold-out map, and a vertical crease to center of rear free endpaper; near fine dust jacket, with some fading to spine, and wear to foot of spine and along bottom edge of front panel. Overall, a handsome copy. In Christopher Tolkien's foreword to The Silmarillion, he writes, "In The Lord of the Rings were narrated the great events at the end of the Third Age; but the tales of The Silmarillion are legends deriving from a much deeper past, when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils." The sprawling and complex work is divided into five sections: "Ainulindalë," "Valaquenta," "Quenta Silmarillion," "Akallabêth," and "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age." When J. R. R. Tolkien died in 1973, his son Christopher took on the task of collecting and organizing his writings, in various states of progress, related to the history and mythology of the world of Arda, which he had begun developing since 1917. He completed editing The Silmarillion with the assistance of Canadian fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay. Item #JRRT038
