I am terrible for not finishing the five armies review, I am, but I will get it done by the end of this week. I'm also going to finish the Greisinger Museum tour.
So my 'Deluxe' copy of the Silmarillion has finally arrived ! It is very pleasing to the eye and quarter bound so it feels just right. Now I'm going to start re-reading the Silmarillion on the morrow, but until then I have peaked at the Foreword and Preface (which I rarely do) and have found an interesting extract in which C.R.Tolkien spoke of the difficulty of assembling this work. I'll copy a part of it down below.
"On my father's death it fell to me to try to bring the work into publishable form. It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book, the diversity of the materials - to show the Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century - would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative."
Christopher.R.Tolkien, Foreword to the Silmarillion,
Christopher.R.Tolkien, Foreword to the Silmarillion,