Fall of Arthur

J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien

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English

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
25 May 2015

Fantasy; Myth & legend told as fiction; Mythological Creatures, People & Places

The world first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the extraordinary story of the final days of England’s legendary hero, King Arthur.

The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain, may well be regarded as his finest and most skilful achievement in the use of the Old English alliterative metre, in which he brought to his transforming perceptions of the old narratives a pervasive sense of the grave and fateful nature of all that is told: of Arthur’s expedition overseas into distant heathen lands, of Guinevere’s flight from Camelot, of the great sea-battle on Arthur’s return to Britain, in the portrait of the traitor Mordred, in the tormented doubts of Lancelot in his French castle.

Unhappily, The Fall of Arthur was one of several long narrative poems that he abandoned in that period. In this case he evidently began it in the earlier nineteen-thirties, and it was sufficiently advanced for him to send it to a very perceptive friend who read it with great enthusiasm at the end of 1934 and urgently pressed him ‘You simply must finish it!’ But in vain: he abandoned it, at some date unknown, though there is some evidence that it may have been in 1937, the year of the publication of The Hobbit and the first stirrings of The Lord of the Rings. Years later, in a letter of 1955, he said that ‘he hoped to finish a long poem on The Fall of Arthur’; but that day never came.

Associated with the text of the poem, however, are many manuscript pages: a great quantity of drafting and experimentation in verse, in which the strange evolution of the poem’s structure is revealed, together with narrative synopses and very significant if tantalising notes. In these latter can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion, and the bitter ending of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, which was never written.

By: J. R. R. Tolkien
Edited by: Christopher Tolkien
Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 210g
ISBN: 9780007557301
ISBN 10: 0007557302
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 25 May 2015
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Author Website: http://www.tolkien.co.uk

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, selling 150 million copies in more than 60 languages worldwide. He died in 1973 at the age of 81. Christopher Tolkien is the third son of J.R.R. Tolkien. Appointed by J.R.R. Tolkien to be his literary executor, he has devoted himself to the publication of his father's unpublished writings, notably The Silmarillion and The History of Middle-earth. This is his 21st book.

Reviews for Fall of Arthur

Praise for The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun: This is the most unexpected of Tolkien's many posthumous publications; his son's `Commentary' is a model of informed accessibility; the poems stand comparison with their Eddic models, and there is little poetry in the world like those Times Literary Supplement The compact verse form is ideally suited to describing impact... elsewhere it achieves a stark beauty Telegraph