Unfinished Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien will be released as a Deluxe Slipcase Edition
For collectors, few announcements generate as much anticipation as a new addition to the Deluxe slipcase series. With Unfinished Tales now joining this carefully crafted line, readers are offered not only a beautifully produced volume, but also a chance to revisit one of Tolkien’s most rewarding and expansive works in a fitting collector’s format.
Bridging the great narratives of Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales deepens and enriches the worlds of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, making this edition an essential piece for both seasoned collectors and devoted readers alike.
After The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, Tales of the Perilous Realm, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun and The Fall of Arthur it is time to see Unfinished Tales to be added to the seris of Deluxe Slipcase Editions. We were all wishing for an illustrated edition but we are extremely happy to see the release of a deluxe edition in December 2013.
The Deluxe collector’s edition of Unfinished Tales features the definitive edition text and includes a full-colour facsimile of Tolkien’s painting, ‘Glórund Sets Forth to Seek Túrin’, which illustrates his narrative ‘The Children of Húrin’, his colour design of a Númenórean tile, and a fold-out reproduction of the definitive map of Middle-earth drawn by Christopher Tolkien.
The book is foil stamped with a Númenórean helmet design by J.R.R. Tolkien that appeared on the first edition hardback and is housed in a matching slipcase.
A lot of guesses about the color had been around, and we are happu to see the brownish slipcase. It will sit nice in the series of deluxe editions and makes the Númenórean helmet design by J.R.R. Tolkien really stand out!
Unfinished Tales is a collection of narratives ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring, and provides those who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with a whole collection of background and new stories.
The book concentrates on the realm of Middle-earth and comprises such elements as The Quest of Erebor, Gandalf’s lively account of how it was that he came to send the Dwarves to the celebrated party at bag-end; the emergence of the sea-god Ulmo before the eyes of Tuor on the coast of Beleriand; and an exact description of the military organization of the Riders of Rohan.
Unfinished Tales also contains the only story about the long ages of Númenor before its downfall, and all that is known about such matters as the Five Wizards, the Palantíri and the legend of Amroth.
The tales were edited by Christopher Tolkien, who provides a short commentary on each story, helping the reader to fill in the gaps and put each story into the context of the rest of his father’s writings.
Title: Unfished Tales
Publishers: HarperCollins
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Publication Date: 5 Dec 2013
Type: De Luxe edition edition, 464 pages
ISBN-10: 0007542925
ISBN-13: 978-0007542925
Related Articles
In a quiet gallery in Oslo, two weathered pine planks carry one of the North’s greatest legends. Their carved figures—dragon, hero, sword, smith—once framed the doorway of Hylestad Stave Church in Setesdal. Around the year 1200, a Norwegian carver told the tale of Sigurd Fáfnisbani in wood long before it was written in Icelandic vellum.
Centuries later, J.R.R. Tolkien drew from the same deep tradition. His lectures, his retellings, and the design of his books reveal how this medieval doorframe echoed through his imagination. The journey from Hylestad to Tolkien is one of craft, storytelling, and the northern imagination carried forward across eight hundred years.
How do two minds from opposite sides of belief — one a devout Catholic mythmaker, the other a Norwegian pessimist — arrive at the same understanding of consciousness as a wound?
In this long-form reflection, written from the northern coast of Norway, Pieter Collier explores the unexpected dialogue between J. R. R. Tolkien and Peter Wessel Zapffe.
Through the fading light of The Silmarillion, he traces how Tolkien’s Elves, Fëanor’s fire, and the “long defeat” echo Zapffe’s philosophy of tragic awareness — and how both writers, in their own ways, transform despair into endurance, and endurance into art.
After years of quiet work behind the scenes, Tolkien collector Pieter Collier shares the story behind his move to Norway — a journey of illness, silence, and renewal. From his new home in Trollbergvika overlooking the Skagerrak, he reflects on why he withdrew, why he returns, and what lies ahead for the Tolkien Library and the lifelong work that began more than three decades ago.