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.
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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
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