J. R. R. Tolkien is the latest author to have an uncovered manuscript to be published posthumously.
The 100-year-old story, called ‘The Story of Kullervo’, sets the stage for the world that becomes his beloved ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, CBS News reported.
It is one of Tolkien’s earliest written works. He began writing it in 1914 while he was a student at Oxford University. The manuscript is considered unfinished and is being presented as such along with some of Tolkien’s margin notes.
Tolkien created the story after his interest in the 19th-century Finnish epic poem, “The Kalevala”, a compilation of folklore and mythology, which is considered one of the most important works of Finnish literature. It includes creation myths, numerous protagonists and the presence of a magical talisman.
Tolkien previously said the unfinished manuscript was “the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own”.
According to Amazon, the book “tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father.”
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high-fantasy works ‘The Hobbit’, ‘The Lord of the Rings’, and ‘The Silmarillion’.
He is popularly identified as the father of modern fantasy literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
