Name: Beren and Lúthien
ISBN: 9780008214227

Beren and Lúthien

The New York Times Bestseller J.R.R. Tolkien's Beren And Lúthien is one of the three 'Great Tales' of the Elder Days. The epic tale of Beren and Lúthien became an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of Tolkien's First Age of the World. Always key to the story is the fate that shadowed their love: Beren was a mortal man, Lúthien an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, imposed on Beren an impossible task before he might wed Lúthien: to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, of a Silmaril. Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts and presented for the first time as a continuous and standalone story, Beren and Lúthien reunites fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, along with the rich landscape and creatures unique to Tolkien's Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien tells the story in his father's own words by giving its original form as well as prose and verse passages from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed. "A good introduction to LOTR fans nervous about taking on The Silmarillion, and also gives longtime fans a fascinating look at the Tolkiens' myth-making process."—EntertainmentWeekly.com "With eloquence and diligence and care, the son reconstructs and retraces the father's journey, pursuing the tale through draft after draft as Tolkien pursued his vision of Middle-earth."—NPR.org

What Hacker News says

db48xSep 2022

That's true for many people, but people also like to show off, or to educate others. I think that recording yourself is just applying new technology to the problem.

For example, Vernor Vinge wrote many of his stories on early computers. He didn't have any way to record that, but his style of annotating the text as he wrote it and thought of ideas or problems turns out to be quite interesting. He eventually shared his annotated text for A Fire Upon the Deep; you can read it at <https://3e.org/vvannot/>.

Although he didn't ever intend to publish them himself, JRR Tolkien kept extensive (but very badly organized) records of how his stories evolved over time. Christopher Tolkien later published stories from those notes, but also successive versions of the same story from different stages of it's development. "Beren and Luthien" is especially fun because you can see Tolkien's mistakes, such as characters like "the appalling Tevildo", Prince of Cats who captures Beren in the earliest surviving draft.

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koolbaNov 2017

The Silmarillion is by far my favorite book in that set. The story of Beren and Luthien alone would make a fantastic series. I hope that's the route they go as well.

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garouJun 2017

I loved to read this story on Silmarillion.

It is a fantasy story about love but still being deeply inspired by Tolkien feelings from his wife. I did not knew about it when was reading and how they (Beren and Lúthien) started loving one another can be a bit fantastic but all their adventure and how they 'are' with themselves feels real and veritable.

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db48xApr 2025

If only version control had been invented earlier.

Some of the in–progress versions of the stories are quite hilarious. In the earliest drafts of the story of Beren and Luthien, Beren sets off to cut a Silmaril from the Iron Crown of Morgoth and is more or less immediately captured by one of Morgoth’s lieutenants, Tevildo. Who is a talking cat. With a whole castle full of talking cats that mostly laze about on the terraces but occasionally waylay passersby and make them serve as scullery maids. Christopher Tolkien calls him “the appalling Tevildo”.

By many changes small and great Tolkien went from Tevildo, Prince of Cats to Sauron, Lord of the Rings. If you ever write a book, keep that in mind when you hesitate to cut or rewrite what seems like your best ideas.

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jfengelDec 2022

It was released only because he was forced to by management.

Given Tolkien's druthers, he'd have kept it all in a private repository, working on branch after branch, cherry-picking changes strung like a Christmas tree.

What he really wanted to release was The Silmarillion, but they passed. It included a long but incomplete verse version of Beren and Luthien, which utterly baffled the readers. The publisher demanded a Hobbit sequel -- which already included a bunch of random stuff from The Silmarillion, but mostly just a few inconsistent fragments.

So he wrote The Lord of the Rings, and despite himself, managed to actually get it released. All the while he kept tinkering with his masterpiece, never releasing it at all. Some other developer (his son) finally cobbled something together after he died -- mostly by reverting to branches that were decades behind the HEAD.

He was very, very, very unproductive. But he sure made a lot of commits -- and then reverted them.

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elihuSep 2022

I think it's great, but it's pretty dense and it's one of those things that you get more out of it by reading it several times. First read through it's just a barrage of names and places, and you don't know who's going to be important later. The second time through you at least know who the main characters are and what decisions are important.

Some parts are more like a traditional narrative: the story of Beren and Luthien, and Turin Turumbar.

If you didn't find it enjoyable to read before you might not change your mind at a second reading, but if it really was a long time ago it's possible your perspective may be different.

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