First editions, all first printings. Twelve volumes. Octavo. Each bound in the publisher’s cloth and in the original dustwrappers.
 
With:
A typed letter signed by Christopher Tolkien on The History Of Middle-Earth and his father’s writings. 2nd November 1982. Addressed to one Mr Bob Jordan of Oral Roberts University, Tulsa. A single typewritten page, signed by Christopher Tolkien.
His letter responds to questions from Mr Jordan on the origins and names of the Nazgûl and on the fate of Ar-Pharazôn, citing The Silmarillion (1977) as the source for the latter, and conceding that in Unfinished Tales (1980) he had published all his father had written on the Nazgúl.
Christopher Tolkien closes the letter by announcing that:
“I am intending to publish next year the first of what I hope will be a series of books on the history of Middle-earth and Aman, beginning with my father’s earliest writings”. A near fine set, generally in bright, near fine dustwrappers. A little rubbing to the head of the fourth volume, some marks to the page egdes of the fifth volume, the dustwrapper of the tenth volume price-clipped.
 
A complete set of first editions of the monumental The History Of Middle-earth.
 
After assembling, editing and publishing The Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien returned to the even greater mass of his father’s unpublished papers giving the full history of Middle-earth.
 
The resulting work - amounting to twelve volumes published over thirteen years - fully encapsulates Tolkien’s vast legendarium: “the body of tales, languages, georgraphy, and other lore from which sprang The Lord Of The Rings and The Silmarillion, and into which The Hobbit ‘intruded’” (Hammond).