The Lost Road

This fifth volume of The History of Middle-earth completes the presentation and analysis of J.R.R. Tolkien's writings on the subject of the First Age up to the time at the end of 1937 and the beginning. of 1938 when he set them for long aside. The book provides all the evidence known for the understanding of his conceptions in many essential matters at the time when The Lord of the Rings was begun; and from the Annals of Valinor, the Annals of Beleriand, the Ainulindale, and the Quenta Silmarillion given here it can be quite closely determined which elements in the published Silmarillion go back to that time, and which entered afterwards. To make this a satisfactory work of reference for these purposes it was thought to be essential to give the texts of the later 1930s in their entirety, even though in parts of the Annals the development from the antecedent versions was not great; for the curious relations between the Annals and the Quenta Silmarillion are a primary feature of the history and here already appear, and it is clearly better to have all the related texts within the same covers. Only in the case of the prose form of the tale of Beren and Luthien have I not done so, since that was preserved so little changed in the published Silmarillion.