The Sunday Times article about the Story of Kullervo by J.R.R. Tolkien. Includes a photo of Tolkien that I dont remember have to be already published:

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article1565746.ece

The story of kullervo - official cover :

Beautiful!

Is this an expanded version of the material published in Tolkien Studies Vol. 7? (which I haven't read)

http://www.tolkiensociety.org/2015/07 ... ok-the-story-of-kullervo/

"HarperCollins have officially announced that J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Story of Kullervo will be released in an edition edited by Verlyn Flieger on 27th August this year.

“The Story of Kullervo” was written by Tolkien in 1914 and was his own reworking and re-imagining of part of the tale of the Finnish saga Kalevala. The story is significant in the development of Tolkien’s legendarium as it provided the basis for Túrin Turambar, a tragic hero of The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin.

Verlyn Flieger, who has also edited Smith of Wootton Major and Tolkien On Fairy-stories, first published “The Story of Kullervo” in 2010 in Tolkien Studies: Volume 7. This edition, available in hardback for £16.99 on the 27th August, follows the similar publications of The Fall of Arthur, Beowulf and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. The official information from the publishers states:

Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo’, as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.

Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and who tries three times to kill him when still a boy, Kullervo is alone save for the love of his twin sister, Wanona, and guarded by the magical powers of the black dog, Musti. When Kullervo is sold into slavery he swears revenge on the magician, but he will learn that even at the point of vengeance there is no escape from the cruelest of fates.

Tolkien himself said that The Story of Kullervo was ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’, and was ‘a major matter in the legends of the First Age’. Tolkien’s Kullervo is the clear ancestor of Túrin Turambar, tragic incestuous hero of The Silmarillion. In addition to it being a powerful story in its own right, The Story of Kullervo – published here for the first time with the author’s drafts, notes and lecture-essays on its source-work, The Kalevala – is a foundation stone in the structure of Tolkien’s invented world."

That's what I thought, which makes "The world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which 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." on the HarperCollins website a trifle dubious.

The Tolkien Treasury

Roverandom, Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major

On Sale: 24/09/2015

Box-set of pocket editions

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780008116644/the-tolkien-treasury

40 POUNDS!

It is cheaper from other suppliers e.g. £24.30 from Speedyhen (but they only deliver to the UK)

http://www.speedyhen.com/StoreFront/P ... iles-of-Ham-the-/17766447

Trotter wrote:
It is cheaper from other suppliers e.g. £24.30 from Speedyhen (but they only deliver to the UK)

http://www.speedyhen.com/StoreFront/P ... iles-of-Ham-the-/17766447

'

Speedyhen quite often sell Tolkien stuff on eBay as well, so might be worth keeping an eye there for non-UK buyers who think the RRP of these little books is a bit on the nose.

I made a commitment to purchase no new books from HarperCollins unless they contained new material or were finishing off an incomplete set, so this doesn't pass the rules, and the money saved will be spent on the Art of Lord of the Rings instead.