J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

Brian Rosebury (University of Central Lancashire)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1973

Places

South Africa (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Silmarillion, the volume of writings edited by Christopher Tolkien and published in 1977 four years after his father's death, is the most orderly and most nearly complete version of J.R.R.Tolkien's mythical and legendary “history”, the backcloth to his more novelistic narratives, The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-5). The imaginary history set out in The Silmarillion begins with the creation of the world; it concludes, after many thousands of years preceded by an indefinite amount of pre-historic time, at the end of the “Third Age”, with a summary of those events narrated in full in The Lord of the Rings. The entire work, however, is barely a third of the length of The …

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1716 words

Citation: Rosebury, Brian. "The Silmarillion". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7744, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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