The Children of Húrin
Painstakingly restored from Tolkien’s manuscripts and presented for the first time as a fully continuous and standalone story, this illustrated paperback of the epic tale of The Children of Húrin will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves, dragons, Dwarves and Orcs, and the rich landscape and characters unique to Tolkien.It is a legendary time long before The Lord of the Rings, and Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwells in the vast fortress of Angband in the North; and within the shadow of the fear of Angband, and the war waged by Morgoth against the Elves, the fates of Túrin and his sister Niënor will be tragically entwined.Their brief and passionate lives are dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bears them as the children of Húrin, the man who dared to defy him to his face. Against them Morgoth sends his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire, in an attempt to fulfil the curse of Morgoth, and destroy the children of Húrin.Begun by J.R.R. Tolkien at the end of the First World War, The Children of Húrin became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to a final and finished form. In this book Christopher Tolkien has constructed, after long study of the manuscripts, a coherent narrative without any editorial invention.
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007
The Children of Húrin © The Tolkien Estate Limited and C R Tolkien 2007
Illustrations © Alan Lee 2007
Cover image by Alan Lee © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
The Proprietor on behalf of the Author and the Editor hereby assert their respective moral rights to be identified as the author of the Work.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Ebook Edition March 2009 ISBN: 9780007322589
Version: 2018-09-06
To
BAILLIE TOLKIEN
Contents
CHAPTER I: THE CHILDHOOD OF TÚRIN
CHAPTER II: THE BATTLE OF UNNUMBERED TEARS
CHAPTER III: THE WORDS OF HÚRIN AND MORGOTH
CHAPTER IV: THE DEPARTURE OF TÚRIN
CHAPTER VI: TÚRIN AMONG THE OUTLAWS
CHAPTER VIII: THE LAND OF BOW AND HELM
CHAPTER IX: THE DEATH OF BELEG
CHAPTER X: TÚRIN IN NARGOTHROND
CHAPTER XI: THE FALL OF NARGOTHROND
CHAPTER XII: THE RETURN OF TÚRIN TO DOR-LÓMIN CHAPTER
CHAPTER XIII: THE COMING OF TÚRIN INTO BRETHIL
CHAPTER XIV: THE JOURNEY OF MORWEN AND NIËNOR TO NARGOTHROND
CHAPTER XVI: THE COMING OF GLAURUNG
CHAPTER XVII: THE DEATH OF GLAURUNG
CHAPTER XVIII: THE DEATH OF TÚRIN
Illustrations
Húrin and Huor are Carried to Gondolin
Húrin Rides to the Nirnaeth Anoediad
Haudh-en-Nirnaeth, the Mound of Tears
The Words of Húrin and Morgoth
Nellas and Túrin in the Woods of Doriath
Túrin is Surrounded by the Outlaws
The Helm of Hador, the Bow of Beleg
Beleg at the Crossings of Teiglin
Finduilas Welcomes Gwindor and Túrin
Gelmir and Arminas Approach the Gates of Nargothrond
Túrin is Carried to Ephel Brandir
The Coming of Túrin into Brethil
Haudh-en-Elleth, the Mound of the Elf-Maid
The Journey of Morwen and Niënor
The Scouts under the Eaves of Brethil
It is undeniable that there are a very great many readers of The Lord of the Rings for whom the legends of the Elder Days (as previously published in varying forms in The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth) are altogether unknown, unless by their repute as strange and inaccessible in mode and manner. For this reason it has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father’s long version of the legend of the Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it.
I have thought that if the story of the fate of Túrin and Niënor, the children of Húrin and Morwen, could be presented in this way, a window might be opened onto a scene and a story set in an unknown Middle-earth that are vivid and immediate, yet conceived as handed down from remote ages: the drowned lands in the west beyond the Blue Mountains where Treebeard walked in his youth, and the life of Túrin Turambar, in Dor-lómin, Doriath, Nargothrond, and the Forest of Brethil.
This book is thus primarily addressed to such readers as may perhaps recall that the hide of Shelob was so horrendously hard that it ‘could not be pierced by any strength of men, not though Elf or Dwarf should forge the steel or the the children of húrin hand of Beren or of Túrin wield it’, or that Elrond named Túrin to Frodo at Rivendell as one of ‘the mighty Elf-friends of old’; but know no more of him.
When my father was a young man, during the years of the First World War and long before there was any inkling of the tales that were to form the narrative of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, he began the writing of a collection of stories that he called
