New Tolkien book announced: Middle-earth love story to be published in 2017
JRR TOLKIEN’S Middle-earth lovers Beren and Luthien, who inspired Aragon and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings, will star in their own book next year.
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The new book will be released in May 2017
The mortal man and immortal elf first appeared in The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s extensive book on the history of Middle-earth.
Beren and Luthien were also referenced by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, as an echo of his romance with the elf Arwen.
HarperCollins made the announcement, with the book to be released in 2017 - 100 years after the author first wrote it.
Technically the story has been published previously, with one version appearing in the 12-volume The History of Middle-earth series.
Aragon and Arwen are an echo of Beren and Luthien
However this new book will include new iterations by Tolkien, who had some of his rare first editions auctioned last month, and illustrations by Alan Lee.
The story was so important to to the author that the Middle-earth lovers’ names were inscribed on his and his wife’s gravestone in Oxford.
Information surrounding the new book was published on the official Tolkien website.
The synopsis reads: “Essential to the story, and never changed, is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Luthien: for Beren was a mortal man, but Luthien was an immortal Elf.
“Her father, a great Elvish lord, in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Luthien.
“This is the kernel of the legend; and it leads to the supremely heroic attempt of Beren and Luthien together to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril.”
The website also includes a description of how and why the book came together.
It reads: “In this book Christopher Tolkien has attempted to extract the story of Beren and Luthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded; but that story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history."
Tolkien's grave has the Middle-earth lovers' names on it
The description added: “To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, he has told the story in his father's own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed.
“Presented together for the first time, they reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.”
The book is 304 pages long and has a recommended retail price of £20.
Beren and Luthien will be published in the UK on May 4th, 2017.