J.R.R. Tolkien "The Shaping Of Middle-Earth" Limited Edition, Leather-Bound Collector's Edition

Easton Press "The Shaping of Middle‑Earth" — Tolkien’s Lost Legends Reborn in a Masterpiece of Fine Binding.

Easton Press 2019. J.R.R. Tolkien. "The Shaping of Middle-Earth". Limited Edition. Collector's Edition. Bound in uniform genuine green leather with distinct cover designs and decorations. Luxuriously bound in full genuine leather. 

THE SHAPING OF MIDDLE-EARTH: THE QUENTA, THE AMBARKANTA, AND THE ANNALS.

Together with the earliest "Silmarillion" and the first Map. 

Edited by Christopher Tolkien. 

The Shaping of Middle-Earth

The fourth volume of The History of Middle-earth series. Edited by Christopher Tolkien and published in 1986, the book collects early writings, maps, and chronologies by J.R.R. Tolkien that reveal how the geography and timeline of the First Age evolved.

Core Contents

The Ambarkanta: Tolkien's "Shape of the World," providing the sole detailed description and diagrams of his imagined universe and cosmos.

Early Texts: Features the 1926 "Sketch of the Mythology" (the earliest concise Silmarillion) and the Quenta Noldorinwa of 1930.

The Annals: Includes the early chronological timelines for Valinor and Beleriand that eventually grew into full historical narratives.

Maps: Features the very first drawn map of Beleriand.

Key Themes

Worldbuilding Evolution: Traces the shift from early, raw mythologies toward the structured lore of The Silmarillion.

Cosmological Shifts: Details structural changes to the flat and subsequent round earth concepts of his universe.

Linguistic Development: Highlights ongoing updates to Elvish names and vocabulary.

J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.

After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world called Arda and, within it, Middle-earth. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the tremendous success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ignited a profound interest in the fantasy genre and ultimately precipitated an avalanche of new fantasy books and authors. As a result, he has been popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature and is widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of all time.