First edition. Octavo. Original publisher’s navy cloth, lettered gilt to spine, in the original dustwrapper. Top edge black.
 
A near fine copy, light toning to endpapers, cloth covers slighty faded, in a near fine dustwrapper, spine very slightly faded with a small nick at the head.
 
 
The first edition of Tolkien’s life’s-work. Tolkien began work on The Silmarillion, the account of The Elder Days, or First Age of Middle-earth, in 1914. He continued to work on the book throughout his life, never finalising it into a publishable form. During the writing and publication of The Lord Of The Rings, set in the Third Age of Middle-earth, Tolkien saw the narratives of it and The Silmarillion as inseparable, and sought publication of them together as “one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings”.
 
Tolkien’s publisher’s on the other hand, wanted what they had asked for; a sequel to The Hobbit, and so the sprawling mass papers that were The Silmarillion remained unpublished on Tolkien’s death. These papers were marshalled into a publishable form by Christopher Tolkien with the assistance of Guy Gavriel Kay in the years after Tolkien’s death in 1973.