About J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien was one of the foremost philologists of his generation, pioneering break-through literature in Old English lexicons, interpretation, and literary theory. Tolkien’s influence in persuading literary theorists to re-evaluate the “Beowulf” poem was revolutionary.
Tolkien is best remembered by fans of fantasy literature as the author of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and (with his son Christopher) The Silmarillion. One of the oldest tales he wanted to tell, and perhaps the final work to be published in Tolkien’s name, is The Children of Húrin, one of the three primal stories that serve as the cornerstones of The Silmarillion.
The Children of Hurin at the Tolkien Studies blog.
About The Children of Hurin
The Children of Húrin is patched together from texts Christopher Tolkien published in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth. Unfortunately, the tale is incomplete because it should also have included “The Wanderings of Hurin”, which was published in The War of The Jewels. Although one can only speculate about why Christopher did not include that story and its accompanying notes in this book, it was certainly in a very incomplete state. At best “The Wanderings of Hurin” would have made an acceptable appendix to The Children of Húrin. Unfortunately, the whole tale remains divided into two pieces.
The Children of Húrin retells the story of Turin Turambar and his sister Ninior, whom he unwittingly married while they were both bespelled by Glaurung, father of dragons. It was only after Turin defeated Glaurung that he and Ninior learned they were related. The story, however, follows Turin through one disastrous relationship after another as he struggles to make sense of his life and oppose Melkor, the Dark Lord of Angband, who was the enemmy of Elves and Men.
Many people consider The Children of Húrin, or more properly the story of Turin, to be one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s finest stories. It is tragic, heroic, and dark. No other modern fantasy author has written a story that compares to The Children of Hurin.
Christopher Tolkien has been quoted as saying (in support of the promotion of the book):
It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father’s long version of the legend of The Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it.
In addition to the color illustrations by Alan Lee, the book includes a detailed map Christopher Tolkien made himself.
The only major flaw of the book is that it does not incorporate the “Wanderings of Húrin”, a fragmented partial story that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, in which Húrin’s final years are revealed in detail. “Wanderings of Húrin” is one of the most important and yet very overlooked source texts for the Silmarillion mythology.