Browsing the Compleat Middle-Earth Library - Page 11

Morgoth's Ring documents the history of the published Silmarillion only up to the point where the Noldor flee into exile. The War of the Jewels takes up the task of explaining how Christopher put the second half of the book together. Whereas he was able to rely extensive on his father's own narratives for the early part of the published book, the second half demanded increasing editorial compression, modification, and outright composition to maintain consistency (and there are still some problems). J.R.R. Tolkien simply never finished rewriting the "Silmarillion" mythology. Christopher's numerous admissions of changes and additions reveal that the published work is more a collaboration between father and son than anything else. The War of the Jewels, however, provides three valuable contributions to the study of Middle-earth proper: a chronology for the First Age; "The Wanderings of Hurin", which tells what really happened after Turin killed himself; and "Quendi and Eldar", another etymological and linguistic work which blurred the distinctions between Tolkien's linguistic and historical interests. There remain some inconsistencies between "Quendi and Eldar" and other works from the same period, but it establishes some very clear foundations for the study of Elvish history and culture (and languages). The work also includes a short story about the first Elves, written in the form of a nursery tale, which thus demonstrates further the complexity and flexibility of the Middle-earth tradition.

For reasons not entirely clear to me, Christopher Tolkien elected not to publish the source materials for the appendices to The Lord of the Rings when he was working on Sauron Defeated. I wish he had done so, as this is very important material. Tolkien cut a great deal of information from the appendices in order to accomodate the publisher's production needs and schedule. There is a wealth of information which can be found in this book and nowhere else, and it is largely consistent with the text of The Lord of the Rings, far more so than most of the other material published in The History of Middle-earth. But this book wraps up Christopher's examination of his father's career with regard to developing Middle-earth (except for the Hobbit-related material, which had been delegated to Taum Santoski). Hence, other sections include the complete text for the two versions of The New Shadow, a sequel to The Lord of the Rings which Tolkien started and abandoned early on, "Of Dwarves and Men", an essay of which part was published in Unfinished Tales, "The Shibboleth of Feanor", which is important for the study of linguistics and corrects errors and omissions Christopher introduced to the genealogy of the Finweans in The Silmarillion, and several other essays which address some questions about the Elves. There is also a short story fragment called "Tal-Elmar" which is set in a Middle-earth like world, but is not really canonical.