Quote:
Originally Posted by rantanplan
I have always disliked how the Tolkien society prohibits anyone from writing new middle-earth books so that we're stuck with half-finished manuscripts.
|
They were notes. I can't believe he'd any intention of publishing most of what Christopher published or finishing most of those.
The Silmarillion might have been the only posthumous work that Tolkien would have wanted published. Certainly he had submitted a version of it, which no doubt frightened the Publisher. He was more into trying to recreate pre-Anglo-Saxon "British" literature and research generally than actually writing Fantasy. Hence his version of Beowulf and spending maybe decades inventing Elvish languages etc. My son bought all the other books Christopher published and I glanced at them. I've two editions each of the Hobbit, LOTR and The Silmarillion. First read LOTR in mid 1960s. I also have "Tree and Leaf" and other bits paperback.
The LOTR and the Hobbit (quite a different style of book) are really complete without the Silmarillion, which is almost equivalent to as if the books IN some fantasy story were written by a mysteriously alive person from that imaginary world. Almost a sort of meta-Fantasy?