A number-one New York Times bestseller when it was originally published, The Silmarillion is the core of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative writing, a work whose origins stretch back to a time long before The Hobbit. Tolkien considered The Silmarillion his most important work, and, though it was published last and posthumously, this great collection of tales and legends clearly sets the stage for all his other writing. The story of the creation of the world...

"The first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien. Kullervo, son of Kalervo, is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien's characters. "Hapless Kullervo," as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny. Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and tried three times to kill him when he was still...

"The final work of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, completing Christopher Tolkien's life-long achievement as the editor and curator of his father's manuscripts"--