Notes
The Lost Road and Other Writings, a collection of writings by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited with preface, commentary and index by Christopher Tolkien.

Volume 5 of the The History of Middle-earth series.

Published on 27 August 1987.

Various diagrams by J.R.R. Tolkien appear on pages 169, 170, 196 and 197. A map of Beleriand, designed by J.R.R. Tolkien and redrawn by Christopher Tolkien, appears on page 408-411.

Details of all British editions of The Lost Road and Other Writings can be found at TolkienBooks.net.

Blurb – Dust Jacket Flap
At the end of 1937 J.R.R. Tolkien reluctantly set aside his now greatly elaborated work on the myths and heroic legends of Valinor and Middle-earth and began The Lord of the Rings. This fifth volume of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, completes the presentation of the whole compass of his writing on those themes up to that time. Later forms of the Annals of Valinor and the Annals of Beleriand had been composed, The Silmarillion was nearing completion in a greatly amplified version, and a new Map had been made; the myth of the Music of the Ainur had become a separate work; and the legend of the Downfall of Númenor had already entered in a primitive form, introducing the cardinal ideas of the World Made Round and the Straight Path into the vanished West. Closely associated with this was the abandoned ‘time travel’ story The Lost Road, which was to link the world of Númenor and Middle-earth with the legends of many other times and peoples. A long essay (The Lhammas) had been written on the ever more complex relations of the languages and dialects of Middle-earth; and an ‘etymological dictionary’ had been undertaken, in which a great number of words and names in the Elvish languages were registered and their formation explained – thus providing by far the most extensive account of their vocabularies that has appeared.

The sixth volume of the History of Middle-earth now in preparation will begin the story of the early evolution of The Lord of the Rings.