[Formendacil]

It's an interesting question you bring up, Aiwendil, regarding Christopher Tolkien's choice to place "Of Tuor" first in Unfinished Tales, over the Narn, and since this is a discussion of UT as a whole as much as UT's individual units, it's an interesting one to consider. Given Christopher Tolkien's rubric of putting the first three sections in chronological order, "Of Tuor" and the Narn are essentially interchangeable, because they cover a contemporary timeframe. True, the Narn starts a few years earlier, because Túrin is Tuor's elder, but it also brings the story a few years later--Tuor and Voronwë's chance encounter with Túrin leaves the entire final, and most finished, section of the Narn yet to come, starting with his return to Dor-Lómin.

Nonetheless, I don't think it was strict chronology that led Christopher Tolkien to place "Of Tuor" first. Aiwendil has already given an adequate account of why it might be a more hopeful first choice, and I'll merely add to that by saying it's a question of balance. If the Narn had gone first, it would have completely unbalanced UT as a whole. As the longest narrative in the book (and arguably the most complete, as shown by its ready transition to a little changed form in the stand-alone, commentary-free Children of Húrin), the Narn would have changed the book from Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth to The Narn i Hîn Húrin and Other Unfinished Tales.


Also, while we're reminiscing about when we first read UT, I'm trying to think when I did. I read both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when I was 11 (or about 11... I'm not actually sure), and had my first attempt at the The Silmarillion shortly after, and was temporarily defeated... but not permanently defeated, because I think that after another reread or two of the LotR I read the Silm for a second time and then had the inertia to leap into UT. All these books were purloined from my dad's college-era bookshelves, and I vaguely remember that my post-Silm trepidation was much allayed by the references I could see to the more familiar world of Men and the Third Age, so I must have been no older than 12 or a very early thirteen, since I definitely read it a few times (if not several) before the movies came out a month or two before I turned 15. I'd tentatively date my first read, then, to 1998 sometime.

It's a fascinating study of my own chronology, even if it interests no one else.