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In your own perception, how completed do you consider the Silmarillion to be as far as the story-line of each chapter goes?

I bought my copy of The Silmarillion when it was first published in 1977. I felt happy to have it in my hands, at last, but sad at the same time, knowing it was left unfinished by its author at his death in 1973, and what was published was only a version of the work, edited by his son, Christopher. It seems from reading J.R.R. Tolkien, A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter that the collection of tales which make up The Silmarillion were completed by J.R.R. Tolkien in his lifetime. He began the writing of what became The Silmarillion in 1916 ,during the First World War. It seems that the story line of each chapter in the published book is complete. It is just sad that each chapter is not the final version, approved by the author, for he died in 1973, before he managed to put together his completed version of The Silmarillion for publication.

Sargis wrote: "In your own perception, how completed do you consider the Silmarillion to be as far as the story-line of each chapter goes?"

It's complete as far as each storyline is concerned, but it seems very remote to me, not just in time but because you're very rarely actually "there" cooking rabbits or leaping across an underground chasm. There are quite a few instances where that feeling happens, but it's not the whole tenor of the book. "Children of Hurin" has much more of that, as do some of the stories in "Unfinished Tales" and fragments in HoME.

But it's still a great feeling to know what happened in Valinor and Beleriand an Age or three ago.

I love the Silmarillion and find it very satisfying as published. But as I read HoME, I get the feeling that perhaps Christopher Tolkien wishes (a little bit, at least) that he had gone with more of a frame-story structure, as in the original Book of Lost Tales. In that structure, the chapters of the Silmarillion would have been framed as stories told by elves around the fire to a mortal visitor. That would have introduced further difficulties, of course, but it might have helped readers to understand the book as a collection of separate-and-connected stories, rather than a full, unified novel like The Lord of the Rings.

I like thinking about what the book would've been like with that framework, but I thoroughly enjoy the published version and all the extra material Christopher has made available in HoME.

I first knew of The Silmarillion when I read Appendix A I The Numenorean Kings, in my India Paper Edition of The Lord of the Rings in 1969, when I was seventeen. After a brief history of the three Silmarils created by Feanor come the words: "Of these things the full tale, and much else concerning Elves and Men, is told in The Silmarillion." In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, in Note On The Shire Records, we are told about the Red Book of Westmarch, Findegil's copy of which contained "the whole of Bilbo's 'Translations from the Elvish.' These three volumnes were found to be a work of great skill and learning in which, between 1403 and 1418, he had used all the sources available to him in Rivendell, both living and written. But since they were little used by Frodo, being almost entirely concerned with the Elder Days, no more is said of them here." So, I thought, when I first read that, Translations from the Elvish by Bilbo Baggins is The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien thought the same. I imagined The Silmarillion beginning with an Introduction and Notes by Bilbo Baggins, in which he explained how he translated the Elvish works into the Common Tongue and gave his own comments on the tales they told. Having the words of Bilbo Baggins introduce The Silmarillion as its translator would have provided a satisfying link for readers to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. If The Lord of the Rings is supposed to be the Red Book of Westmarch, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien into modern English, then The Silmarillion could have been presented as his translation into modern English of Translations from the Elvish by Bilbo Baggins. Never mind. We will never know what The Silmarillion would have been like if J.R.R. Tolkien had completed the final version of it to his liking and published it in his lifetime, but we should still be grateful for the version that was published by his son, Christopher.

{fav. quote: “Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end?�� �� Master Samwise}


The heroes of The Silmarillion all have their own stories to tell, and you cheapen their valour if you view them only through the narrow lens of a later tale.
Be patient; the full glory of the complete legendarium will unfold in its own time. You will probably also have to re-read The Lord of the Rings to pick up on all the connections.

.. also, assuming you're familiar with LOTR & Hobbit, this is a collection of stories that Bilbo translated from the songs and poetry he learned at Rivendell.

Not only do the stories come from an Elvish perspective, but they also assume a general knowledge on the part of the reader.

(So you will see phrases like, “until the doom of Gondolin was come,�� more than five chapters before the Fall of Gondolin.)


Foreknowledge only enhances your appreciation of the way events unfold!


It feels, in my mind, as complete as Tolkien envisaged -- although he probably would have done more regarding completion before publication.

I love the feeling the Silmarillion gives of being a collection of epic tales, folklore and religion, garnered from disparate sources and brought together to preserve them. This incomplete feel is, for me, part of the book's charm, enhancing my enjoyment rather than detracting from it.

As Lucinda says, above, that's pretty much what Bilbo has, in fact, done within the story. It also echoes the work of Elias Lönnrot, the mythographer who put together the epic poem Kalevala: The Land of the Heroes from the traditional story-poems he collected on his trips into rural Finland. As is fairly well known, Lönnrot's epic and the Finnish language were influences on Tolkien's legendarium.

Definitely enjoyed the published Silmarillion as a collection of legends from ancient times, the mythical nature of the book definitely lends to it's structure as a grouping of hazy myths with fleeting details/specifics. Some stories like Children of Hurin, Beren & Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin have fuller accounts which saw them republished by Christopher later in his life, but as an epic narrative sweep, the published Silmarillion is a great collection of Ancient Middle-Earth mythology & hero-stories and works well as a cohesive whole as it is.

Check the opinion of Joseph Pearce on this matter in

Love the idea that the snooty Noldor Elves actually were actually recorded warts and all in the book. Yes, a dwarfophile as much as an Anglophobe in real life, but turning serious for a moment I have a copy on my limited shelf space - moving from a five bedroom house with full basement to a two bedroom apartment meant sacrificing much more than I would have wished - because it is a delicious “history�� of the whole creation to the end of the Second Age part of the storyline in one volume.

Could one argue that JRRT would have written it differently? Yes. But he did not publish it and Christopher Tolkien did. Editorial license is a thing.

The bulk of the tales featured in the Silmarillion were left unfinished seeing that J.R.R. died before he may complete them. However, the existence of, for example, the Great Tales of Middle Earth, was to finish off those tales that didn't get a solid end �� or at least make them more wholesome. The Silmarillion definitely has its flaws in its completeness, but perhaps how it was left unfinished could seem rather appealing to the readers, making them wonder what would happen in those time periods that Tolkien didn't write about (publish).