Word: tolkien
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...prodded into final shape by Tolkien's son Christopher, it has become a bestseller practically overnight...
That is pretty much how things go in this vast Genesis of Middle-earth, the Elvish books of Exodus and Kings, the combined Paradise Lost, Prometheus revisited and revised Bulfinch's Mythology that is The Silmarillion. Tolkien brooded over it for a lifetime but never got it published...
Readers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, teased for years by hints about the origins of Middle-earth will find in The Silmarillion a cosmology to call their own. Tolkien's familiar, deep-rooted sense of the unwinnable war between good and evil is also evident, along with a reverence for trees. Characteristically, dragons-those antique cruise missiles used by Morgoth-are plentiful, as are huge eagles, for rescuing heroes and depositing them safely on mountain tops...
...coldhearted reader, in fact, may find The Silmarillion at least half fustian and more than a yard long. There are moments when Tolkien sounds as if he were writing a parody of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the style of the Book of Revelations...
...only Tolkien's adoring legions, are likely to care whether the book stirs the Tolkien industry to further rounds of posters, maps, calendars, recordings and items like The Guide to Middle-earth...