If you’re like me, you thought the Lord of the Rings movies were fantastic! Don’t be sad that the movies are over, and don’t waste your time watching the movies over and over again when there is so much more Middle-earth for you to explore! Director Peter Jackson had to leave out whole sections of the books to get them to manageable lengths. Why, in the Fellowship of the Ring alone, you can read about the encounter with the Barrow-Wights, the effect of mushrooms on hobbits, and good ole Tom Bombadil himself!
With the success of his writings, Tolkien decided to dig out several old Middle-earth histories he had written about the ages before the events of the Lord of the Rings occur. He edited them down and published them in 1977 in The Silmarillion. We learn about the Fall of Numenor, the story of Beren and Luthien, and others who were alluded to other books. I prize my copy as the best volume that Tolkien ever wrote.
But there was more to come. Tolkien and later his son Christopher published the raw material, the notes, scraps, fragments, alternate endings, and ideas of Middle-earth. These became the series The History of Middle-earth.
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