Is Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle Earth similar to his Unfinished Tales?

Question

i.e. an edited and annotated presentation of his father's unpublished works.

Discovering the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales has been a breath of fresh air for me personally; especially when compared to all the movie related stuff that we're bombarded with these days :/

JRR & Chris Tolkien > Peter Jackson and all the 'movie' experts.

Answer 1

There are bits of stories....my favourite is The Lost Road, and I mean my favourite Tolkien writing after LOTR, Silmarillion, Lost and Unfinished Tales. Unfinished, it is Tolkien's effort due to a pub bet with CS Lewis to create a time-travel tale, which would be read and judged by the other Inklings. It takes what was then a modern day father and son and ties them in with Numenor. Delicious read, but it abruptly stops....THIS is the one I want Christopher to expound on and finish....oh well. Lewis's effort became the Narnia series.

The encyclopaedic History series is DETAILED how-he-did-it. Seeing Aragorn start off as a boot-wearing Hobbit called Stomper was almost too much for me, but many of the characters evolved vastly from whence they began. Like so many of us, I'm always looking for more stories, rather than the autopsy of the writer's creative process. But am grateful to Christopher for those bits, like The Lost Road.

Answer 2

The History of Middle Earth - which is 12 volumes in total - is a series of books showing how J R R Tolkien evolved his stories. It is actually an edition of most of his papers relating to Middle Earth. Rather than more stories which you haven't seen, you will get the earlier versions of what was eventually published, and various odd bits and pieces. Things that he started, then abandoned, or only ever did very roughly. Poetic versions of some of the stories you will have read. For example - did you know that when he first started writing LOTR Frodo was called Bingo, and Strider was Trotter. If you are fanatical, it is interesting - if you just want more stories go to the Children of Hurin.

Answer 3

If you want more pure stories then you're looking for things like The Children of Hurin, as mentioned.

Smith of Wooten Major, Farmer Giles of Ham and Roverandom are some others, none of which have anything to do with Middle Earth really, though Smith deals with Faerie.