Announced today, the Tolkien Estate will be publishing
The Fall of Numenor this November: a collection of Tolkien's writings on Numenor in the style of the
Beren and Luthien and
Fall of Gondolin books. It's described as "collect[ing] together J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings of the Second Age", and like the Great Tales is illustrated with multiple colour paintings and sketches from Alan Lee. It's edited by Brian Sibley, who I confess I know little about.
I'm so pleased with this. ^_^ I've been saying pretty much since the Amazon series was revealed as Numenorean that the Estate should push out a book of what Tolkien wrote on Numenor, and this looks to be exactly that.
No word on specific contents, except that they're using the Tale of Years to provide structure for it. Looking through the books, I think the relevant texts go something like this:
- "Lives of the Numenoreans" (NoME)
- "The Land and Beasts of Numenor" (NoME) < These two were edited down to make the UT "Description".
- "The Line of Elros" (UT)
- "The Mariner's Wife" (UT)
- Portions of "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn" (UT) and "Of the Rings of Power" (Silm), and probably bits of Appendix A (LotR) too.
- "Akallabeth" (Silm)
Whether they could also work in parts of "The Lost Road" and "The Notion Club Papers" is a bit more difficult;
Fall of Gondolin managed by presenting the 1917 Fall entirely separately, but this sounds a bit more cohesive. We shall have to wait and see.
(And the timing is pretty good here - it's spot on for people to finish the first series of Amazon's
Rings of Power, and want to read "the book it came from".)
hS