The commercial success of Unfinished Tales demonstrated that the demand for Tolkien's stories several years after his death was not only still present but growing. Versions of such tales, including the origins of Gandalf and the other Istari (Wizards), the death of Isildur and the loss of the One Ring in the Gladden Fields, and the founding of the kingdom of Rohan, help expand knowledge about Middle-earth. Unfinished Tales provides more detailed information about characters, events and places mentioned only briefly in The Lord of the Rings. Each tale is followed by a long series of notes explaining inconsistencies and obscure points.Īs with The Silmarillion, Tolkien's son Christopher edited and published Unfinished Tales before he had finished his study of the materials in his father's archive. Thus some of these are incomplete stories, while others are collections of information about Middle-earth. Unlike The Silmarillion, also published posthumously (in 1977), for which the narrative fragments were modified to connect into a consistent and coherent work, the Unfinished Tales are presented as Tolkien left them, with little more than names changed (the author having had a confusing habit of trying out different names for a character while writing a draft). Many of the tales within are retold in The Silmarillion, albeit in modified forms the work also contains a summary of the events of The Lord of the Rings told from a less personal perspective. Tolkien that were never completed during his lifetime, but were edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1980. Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth is a collection of stories and essays by J.

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