At the end of the 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 Annuals of Valinor and the Annals of Berleriand had been composed,

The Shaping Of Middle-Earth is the fourth volume that contains the early myths and legends which led to the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic tale of war, The Silmarillion.

In this fourth volume of The History of Middle-earth, the shaping of the chronological and geographical structure of the legends of Middle-earth and Valinor is spread before us.

We are introduced to the hitherto unknown Ambarkanta or "Shape of the

One of the three 'Great Tales' of the Elder Days, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Húrin takes place in Middle-earth thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The Children of Húrin is the first complete book by Tolkien since the 1977 publication of The Silmarillion. Six thousand years before the One Ring is destroyed, Middle-earth lies under the shadow of the Dark Lord Morgoth.