The Shaping of Middle earth

Contents

1. Prose fragments following the Lost Tales — brief, uncompleted texts which continue on from The Book of Lost Tales
2. The earliest "Silmarillion" — also referred to as the "Sketch of the Mythology", this is the start of the Silmarillion proper
3. The Quenta — a further developed version of the "Sketch", the first full narrative since the Tales
4. The first "Silmarillion" map — a reproduction of the first map of Beleriand
5. The Ambarkanta — cosmological essays, maps, and diagrams
6. The earliest Annals of Valinor
7. The earliest Annals of Beleriand

The Annals

The Annals of Valinor and Annals of Beleriand show the earliest outline of the chronology of the First Age as envisaged in the early 1930s. The fifth volume of the series published the following year (1987) with "The Later Annals of Valinor" and "The Later Annals of Beleriand" outlines revisions to both texts made c. 1937.

Title page

There is an inscription in the Fëanorian characters (Tengwar, an alphabet Tolkien has devised for High-Elves) in the first pages of every History of Middle-earth volume, written by Christopher Tolkien and describing the contents of the book. The inscription in Book IV reads: "Herein are the Quenta Noldorinwa, the History of the Gnomes, the Ambarkanta or Shape of the World by Rúmil, the Annals of Valinor and the Annals of Beleriand by Pengolod, the Wise of Gondolin with maps of the world in the Elder Days and translations made by Ælfwine the Mariner of England into the tongue of his own land.".