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Random quote: "Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." - J.R.R. Tolkien - Fellowship of the Ring
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Sorting out the Middle Earth offerings
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mgkurilla
Posted 2019-11-10 9:47 AM (#21462)
Subject: Sorting out the Middle Earth offerings



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While I've read the the Hobbitt and the LOTR trilogy, I'm currently working my way through The Silmarillion. There appear to be standalone offerings that have overlap with individual chapters in The Silmarillion (Beren and L?thien, for example). At the same time, the page lengths listed under the various Amazon pages seem to suggest that these standalone offerings might be extended versions.

Can anyone provide a summary of the unique tales versus reprintings to avoid buying previously read editions?
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gallyangel
Posted 2019-11-16 3:39 AM (#21473 - in reply to #21462)
Subject: Re: Sorting out the Middle Earth offerings



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Location: The Wilds of Washington		Actually that's a deep dark rabbit hole.

It's not so much different editions as differing versions of the same core stories - which he started way back when, even before LOTR.
What you've got to understand is that after LOTR, The Silmarillion and half a dozen books since, have all been published after his death.
They've been pieced together by his son using voluminous volumes of unpublished material, draft after draft, sometime right over the top of each other to form some kind of coherent story narrative. (How coherent is a matter of opinion which only gets worse with hind site.)
Beren and Luthien is a perfect example. He started that back in WW1. We then glimpse of the story in LOTR, and then get a fuller version in Silmarillion. And then we get two other versions in the Beren and Luthien book. It's like the same themes and basic story line run throughout, but each version is different in it's execution, how Tolkien wrote or thought of the story at that particular time.

Tolkien has actually become a field of study. To the people studying Beren and Luthien, specifically the evolution the story through time, such things as keeping track of the details of each version, what was added or subtracted, and what it might mean for the over all narrative, is heady territory.

I myself am a Tolkien fan, but I understand that I play in the shallows. I enjoy the hobbit and LORT and a few of the other books, but I know there is deep deep water there that I don't care to dive into. I might paddle over the deep water in a canoe every once in awhile but that's just skimming the surface. The depths are not for me.

And here you thought you were asking a simple question!

Last thought is the Tolkien Professor.

https://tolkienprofessor.com

If you think you've been through the three main books and gotten it pretty well, he has a free series of lectures that will probably prove that you only got a fraction of what was there.
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