In our latest Library feature, Katelyn Rushe shares her theory that Smaug doesn’t speak English, Bilbo gains the ability to speak and understand Dragon when he puts on the One Ring.
Category: Headlines
Available for pre-order now is allegedly one of Tolkien’s darkest stories, which (if any of you are familiar with my books) has me all kinds of excited.
Here’s the official press release we have received:
THE STORY OF KULLERVO
The world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father.
- • The Story of Kullervo is the first piece of prose fiction that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote
- • This is its first appearance in book form
- • 2015 is the centenary of its creation
- • Illustrated on the cover by one of Tolkien’s own paintings
Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo’, as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.
Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruellest of fates.
Tolkien himself said that The Story of Kullervo was ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’, and was ‘a major matter in the legends of the First Age’. Tolkien’s Kullervo is the clear ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to it being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala – is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world.
The book will be released in the UK on the 27th of August 2015 and is scheduled for release in April 2016 in the US.
While I doubt the rights will be released any time soon, this sounds like an edge-of your seat read that would make a fantastic film. With stories like this kicking around in his desk drawers (or wherever the Professor kept them!), one has to wonder what would be his chosen medium if alive and publishing today. Would he be like J.K. Rowling and write not only novels, but for the stage, and the screen as he expanded his magical world? Or do you think he would’ve just stuck to books? Before you go into a lecture about Jackson’s films “ruining everything,” remember that Tolkien willingly sold the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, knowing full well their stories would be told on the big screen with all kinds of changes to match the cinematic storytelling medium.
In our latest Library feature, Katelyn Rushe shares her theory that the Dwarves pre-wrote the song “Blunt the Knives” to deliberately tease the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and get him “all fired up”.
Continue reading “Did the Dwarves Pre-write “Blunt the Knives””
A dynamic and conceptual exhibition of Art inspired by the writing of JRR Tolkien opens in the Northern UK City of Sheffield for the duration of September.
Continue reading “Evil in the Shining Light: Art inspired by the works of JRR Tolkien”
Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our regular monthly feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. Each month we will feature a small selection of the poems submitted, but we hope you will read all of the poems that we have received here in our Great Hall of Poets.
So come and join us by the hearth and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net
One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Just a couple of days on the heels of another wizard’s birthday, Sir Christopher Lee turned 93 today. He was born in Belgravia, Westminster, London on May 27, 1922.
A true titan of cinema if there ever was one, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the shoes of the great wizard Saruman the White. We hope you had a wonderful birthday and we wish you many happy returns, Sir Christopher! Continue reading “Happy Birthday to Sir Christopher Lee!”