Tuesday, 8 October 2024

History of Middle Earth free online

For those of you who have not yet tried reading Tolkien's posthumously published works, you can find the twelve volumes of The History of Middle Earth in rather user-un-friendly - but free! - online versions at this website. A real treasure trove. 

This provides access to The Notion Club Papers (Volume 9), The Lost Road (Volume 5), Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (Volume 10) and a lot of interesting stuff about elves and dwarves (Volume 12). 

If you enjoy these, you will probably want to buy paper copies of all twelve books; but these versions provide a comprehensive taster. 


2 comments:

Lucas said...

Out of curiosity, did you start with volume 1 or somewhere else? I started with volume 6, seemed natural enough, but it's been a very slow read. 2 years and I'm not through, because I haven't enjoyed it, yet I feel that I have to understand the start of the LoTR and how the FoTR developed in order to understand more of what happens later.

Bruce Charlton said...

I think I started with Sauron Defeated (9) because I wanted to read The Notion Club Papers, then read the other three LotR volumes, then Lost Road (5), then Vol ten then twelve - but I have not yet read all through the other volumes - dipped in here and there.