Why is “The Silmarillion” not as popular as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?”
The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien’s mythopoeic works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, who later became a noted fantasy writer. The Silmarillion, along with J. R. R. Tolkien’s other works, forms a comprehensive, yet incomplete, narrative that describes the universe of Middle-earth within which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. After the success of The Hobbit, and prior to the publication of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s publisher requested a sequel to The Hobbit, and Tolkien sent them an early draft of The Silmarillion. But through a misunderstanding, the publisher rejected the draft without fully reading it, with the result that Tolkien began work on “A Long Expected Party”, the first chapter of what he described at the time as “a new story about Hobbits”, which became The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion comprises five parts. The first part, Ainulindalë, tells of the
The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works, standardized and published posthumously by his son Christopher. It contains these five pieces: The Ainulindalë – the creation of Eä, Tolkien’s universe. The Valaquenta – a brief description of the Valar and Maiar, the supernatural beings The Quenta Silmarillion – the history of the events before and during the First Age, which forms the bulk of the collection The Akallabêth – the history of the Second Age Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age These five pieces were initially quite separate, but it was the elder Tolkien’s express wish that they be published together. The Silmarillion, together with other posthumous collections of Tolkien’s works, such as Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth, forms a narrative describing the history of the universe where The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. It is much less detailed than those two works, but it covers a much longer period of time. Although reading The
