The Silmarillion is an account of the Elder
Days, of the First Age of Tolkien’s world. It is the ancient drama to which the
characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of them
such as Elrond and Galadriel took part. The tales of The Silmarillion are set in
an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-Earth, and the High
Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels
containing the pure light of Valinor.
Included in the book are
several shorter works. The Ainulindale is a myth of the Creation and in the
Valaquenta the nature and powers of each of the gods is described. The
Akallabeth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Númenor at the
end of the Second Age and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at
the end of the Third Age, as narrated in The Lord of the Rings.
This pivotal work features
the revised, corrected text and includes, by way of an introduction, a
fascinating letter written by Tolkien in 1951 in which he gives a full
explanation of how he conceived the early Ages of Middle-earth.
