The completed Tale of Gondolin was published 13 years ago?!

[davem]

Originally Posted by johnboy3434

"Not Tolkien's work?" How many liberties did this guy take? If it is fundamentally based on the actual text written by Tolkien, with nothing of drastic import added or removed, then it is Tolkien's work, just not as Tolkien would have published it. . Same case with Lewis. He put together a group of texts by J. R. R. Tolkien, using his own judgment (the quality of which is understandably disputable) to decide on how to go about it. While I'm sure this is not the way Tolkien would have published the Tale of Gondolin, the fact of the matter is that he did write it, regardless of how it turned out.

'Fundamentally based on' could mean pretty much anything. You can't cut & paste together bits of an author's work, written over a period of 4 or 5 decades, change bits that don't 'fit', with nothing more than your own opinion & 'personal taste' for guidance, whip it off to a Vanity publisher somewhere to knock out 50 copies & then just expect it to be accepted & authorised for publication by the Estate. I've read some of Alex Lewis's writings, heard some of his talks &, God help me, I've even heard him sing some of his songs, & I can tell you that, while he's a halfway competent (if boring) scholar of Tolkien he's the very last person who should be allowed to edit together a text of the Tale of Gondolin.

Look, you, I, or anyone on here, could 'edit' together a 'complete' text of Beren & Luthien, whack it on Pandora & print out 50 copies. Would the fact that our effort was physically in print in book form be sufficient for the Estate to just pick it up & put it out with the JRRT monogram on the cover & new illustrations by Alan Lee?