This de luxe collector's edition features the first edition text and eight
full-colour plates, with an exclusive colour frontispiece illustration. The book
is quarterbound with a special gold motif stamped on the front board and is
presented in a matching slipcase.
Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts and presented for the first
time as a fully continuous and standalone story, the epic tale of The Children
of Hurin will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves
and Men, dragons and Dwarves, eagles and Orcs, and the rich landscape and
characters unique to Tolkien.
There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings,
and the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the
Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but which were
drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. In that
remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband,
the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turin and his sister Nienor
unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth
against the lands and secret cities of the Elves. Their brief and passionate
lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the
children of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn him to his face.
Against them he sent his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in
the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire. Into this story of brutal conquest
and flight, of forest hiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening
hope, the Dark Lord and the Dragon enter in direly articulate form. Sardonic and
mocking, Glaurung manipulated the fates of Turin and Nienor by lies of diabolic
cunning and guile, and the curse of Morgoth was fulfilled. The earliest versions
of this story by J.R.R. Tolkien go back to the end of the First World War and
the years that followed; but long afterwards, when The Lord of the Rings was
finished, he wrote it anew and greatly enlarged it in complexities of motive and
character: it became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth.
Author Biography
J.R.R. Tolkien CBE was born on 3rd January 1892. Best known for The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings, selling 150 million copies in more than 40 languages,
he died in 1973 aged 81. Christopher Tolkien, born on 21st November 1924, is
the third son of J.R.R. Tolkien. He lectured on early English and northern
literature at New College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow and Tutor in 1964. As
literary executor, he has devoted himself to the publication of his
father's unpublished writings, notably The Silmarillion and The History of
Middle-earth. He lives in France.
