Tolkien News

Today's Guardian reports that an unfinished tale abandoned by J R R Tolkien in 1918 has been completed by his son and will be published next spring, it was announced yesterday. Christopher Tolkien has worked for 30 years on an edited version of The Children of Hurin, a story set in the legendary land of elves, hobbits and dwarves depicted by his father in the epic trilogy The Lord Of The Rings. In a statement issued through the publishers Houghton Mifflin in the US and HarperCollins in the UK, he said: "It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers."

A version of The Children of Hurin, "Narn I Hin Hurin" is included in the collection Unfinished Tales - and I note there's a new Unfinished Tales Anniversary edition which has got a new cover that looks as if it may be a painting by JRRT himself (and if Blogger had got the stupid picture posting error sorted out (there's no Done button !), I'd post it here, but I'm afraid you'll just have to follow the link to see it !).