Saw this a little while back and have just spent 20 minutes hunting it back down:
an interview with Hostetter from July of this year, which discusses the book. Excerpts:
Quote:
|
Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I started work on what would become The Nature of Middle-earth nearly 25 years ago, when I received a bundle of photocopies that Christopher Tolkien referred to as “late philological essays”. From this bundle I edited and published three texts in Vinyar Tengwar, that are also included (in more-or-less-differently edited form) in NoMe: “Ósanwe-kenta” (1998), “Notes on Órë” (2000), and “The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor” (2001). Some time after this, Christopher asked me to help the French scholar [Michaël Devaux] edit a set of late writings on Elvish reincarnation, which were eventually published in the journal La Feuille de la Compagnie vol. 3 in 2014, and will likewise be included in NoMe.
|
At long last, 'Owanwe-kenta' and 'Rivers and Beacon-hills' in accessible form! I've seen mention that the reincarnation writings have only been published in French before, so that's exciting. And - we have an abbreviation, straight from the editor's mouth. How appropriate that the last Christopher-era Tolkien book will be called
(g)NoMe.
Quote:
|
I can say that The Nature of Middle-earth will appeal most to those who enjoy the descriptive and historical parts of Unfinished Tales, as well as those who enjoy Morgoth’s Ring.
|
Well, MR is the best of the non-narrative HoME books, so I'm with him there.
From the way he talks in the interview, I think there's less chance we'll be seeing drafts, so those hints about Numenor in earlier press releases could well be new material rather than early versions of the 'Description'. Which would be cool!
Current publication date is still 2nd September this year (er... a month away!). Oddly enough, that's the same date, though a year earlier, as the Amazon series airs. ... okay, so it's the anniversary of Tolkien's death, that's slightly grim. HoME XII was published on the same date in 1996, so I guess there's a tradition to be followed.
hS