The History of Middle Earth, Volumes 1-12, and The Silmarillion
London: Allen & Unwin/Unwin Hyman/Harper Collins, 1977-1996. First Edition. 13 vols., a complete set. Some pin-point rubbing to the tips of a couple volumes, else a fine set in fine, unclipped dust jackets. The Silmarillion and Volumes 1, 2, and 4 have no printed prices, as issued; Volume 4 has an A&U price sticker. Volumes 10 and 11 have printed prices on the flaps (in contrast to the unprinted export edition dust jackets, which by the usual standards of the publication process probably preceded those with printed prices). Item #1341
These tales, poems, and songs underlay The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien began writing them while in college, 40 years before The Lord of the Rings was published. He was a student of philology, and in his writing, he invented archaic languages and the stories told in those languages, then tracked the evolution of both the stories and the language until they became the legends and mythology that informed Middle Earth.
This methodology gives the Trilogy its powerful sense of reality and immediacy, but the stories are compelling in themselves, beyond the degree to which they inform his masterpiece. Most of these stories were written between 1913 and the early 1940s, which gives the lie to the simplistic notion that Tolkien's trilogy is a mere analogue for the conflicts involved in World War II. If anything, it was the First World War that influenced Tolkien in his view that battle between the forces of good and evil was not a struggle of ideologies so much as one between a worldview in harmony with nature and one focused on unchecked industrial development.
Published over the course of more than a dozen years, complete sets are expensive and tedious to assemble as all volumes had small first printings, some positively tiny (1,500 copies or so). The ultimate history of the worlds that underlay The Lord of the Rings. The set includes: The Silmarillion (1977); The Book of Lost Tales (1983); The Book of Lost Tales, Part II (1984); The Lays of Beleriand (1985); The Shaping of Middle-Earth (1986); The Lost Road (1987); The Return of the Shadow (1988); The Treason of Isengard (1989); The War of the Ring (1990); Sauron Defeated (1992); Morgoth’s Ring (1993); The War of the Jewels (1994); The Peoples of Middle Earth (1996).
Price: $6,850.00