Notes
The Book of Lost Tales, Part I, a collection of writings by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited with foreword, commentary, appendix, glossary and index by Christopher Tolkien.

Volume 1 of the The History of Middle-earth series.

Published on 27 October 1983.

Illustrations by J.R.R. Tolkien appear as a frontispiece and on pages 81 and 84.

Details of all British editions of The Book of Lost Tales, Part I can be found at TolkienBooks.net.

Blurb – Dust Jacket Flap
The Book of Lost Tales was the first major work of imagination by J.R.R. Tolkien, begun in 1916-17 when he was 25 years old, and left incomplete several years later. It stands at the beginning of the entire conception of Middle-earth and Valinor, for the Lost Tales were the first form of the myths and legends that came to be called The Silmarillion. Embedded in English legend and English association, they are set in the narrative frame of a great westward voyage over the Ocean by a mariner named Eriol (or Ælfwine) to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, where Elves dwelt; from them he learned their true history, the Lost Tales of Elfinesse. In the Tales are found the earliest accounts and original ideas of Gods and Elves, Dwarves, Balrogs and Orcs; of the Silmarils and the Two Trees of Valinor; of Nargothrond and Gondolin; of the geography and cosmography of the invented world.

The Book of Lost Tales will be published in two volumes; this first volume contains the Tales of Valinor, and the second will include Beren and Lúthien, Túrin and the Dragon, and the only full narratives of the Necklace of the Dwarves and the Fall of Gondolin. Each tale is followed by a commentary in the form of a short essay, together with the texts of associated poems, and each volume contains extensive information on names and vocabulary in the earliest Elvish languages. Further books in this series are planned to extend the history of Middle-earth as it was refined and enlarged in later years, and will include the long Lays of Beleriand, the Ambarkanta or Shape of the World, the Lhammas or Account of Tongues, annals, maps, and many other unpublished writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.