July's rumors of a new J.R.R. Tolkien work have been confirmed by publisher HarperCollins, which will release long-form poem The Fall of Arthur next year. It was written prior to Tolkien's success as author of The Hobbit.
July's rumors of a new J.R.R. Tolkien work have been confirmed by publisher HarperCollins, which will release long-form poem The Fall of Arthur next year.
Writer-J-R-R-Tolkien-Photo-AFP
Edited by son Christopher Tolkien, the poem is presented in its unfinished and hitherto unpublished form, though select extracts were included in Humphrey Carter's J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography.
It was written prior to Tolkien's success as author of The Hobbit and adheres to a historic, Northern English meter that falls within the bounds of alliterative verse - as does well-known epic Beowulf and Seamus Heaney's 1999 Beowulf: A New Translation.
Tolkien's modernization of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, another Arthurian legend written in alliterative verse, was first published in 1925.