Myths and Legends (Boxed Set) #2
22 Dec, 2025
(edited)
2025-12-22 4:27:25 PM UTC
2025-12-22 4:27:25 PM UTC
What is Myths and Legends (Boxed Set) 2: The Old English Exodus, Finn and Hengest, The Story of Kullervo, The Lay of Aotrou & Itroun, & The Battle of Maldon by J. R. R. Tolkien about?
A stunning hardcover boxed set celebrating J.R.R. Tolkien’s work inspired by the myths and legends of Europe, featuring double-sided dustjackets. This unique set contains Finn and Hengest, The Story of Kullervo, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, and The Battle of Maldon along with The Old English Exodus, reprinted for the first time in 50 years.
For the first time since it was published in the 1980s, this boxed set includes The Old English Exodus, a translation of the Old English poem telling the story of the Israelites fleeing Egypt. Tolkien’s aim with this translation was to interpret the poem, reconstruct what the original may have looked like, and demonstrate how it fits into the broader tradition of Old English poetry. Edited by fellow Old English scholar and former pupil, Joan Turville-Petre, this version gives readers the best sense of Tolkien’s methods and his important contributions to understanding this poem along with a preface by the editor’s son, Thorlac Turville-Petre, situating Joan’s commentary within the context of its initial publication.
The tale of Finn and Hengest, two fifth-century heroes in Northern Europe, is told both in Beowulf and in a fragmentary Anglo-Saxon poem known as The Fight at Finnesburg, but so obscurely and allusively that its interpretation had been a matter of controversy for over 100 years. Tolkien reveals a classic tragedy of divided loyalties, vengeance, blood and death.
The Story of Kullervo is a 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. 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.
Set ‘In Britain’s land beyond the seas’ during the Age of Chivalry, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun tess of a childless Breton Lord and Lady and the tragedy that befalls them when Aotrou seeks to remedy their situation with the aid of a magic potion obtained from a corrigan, or malevolant fairy. When the potion succeeds and Itroun bears twins, the corrigan returns seeking her fee, and Aotrou is forced to choose between betraying his marriage and losing his life.
In 991 AD, vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defence-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack was immortalised in the poem, The Battle of Maldon. Written shortly after the battle, the poem survives now as a 325-line fragment, and is an invaluable example of both a heroic tale and the vivid expression of the lost language of our ancestors. Tolkien’s prose translation of The Battle of Maldon is presented by leading Tolkien scholar, Peter Grybauskas, alongside the definitive treatment of The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Tolkien’s own dramatic verse-dialogue inspired by The Battle of Maldon.
Myths & Legends 2 (with reversible jackets!) coming in May, ISBN 9780008795184. The hardbacks will not be available separately, and The Old English Exodus – in its very first HarperCollins edition – has a new preface by the editor’s son, Thorlac Turville-Petre.
We are printing a Wm. Morrow edition as well, but I’m not sure yet about their date, as production has to finalise the shipping. Probably just a few weeks later.
UK
US
https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmi ... Fvariant%3D55995938537851
Link to Boxed Set #1
Incredible!
Worth to say the box illustration is a tapestry exhibited at the Louvre museum in Paris (The Offering of the Heart, circa 1410)
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010111577
Worth to say the box illustration is a tapestry exhibited at the Louvre museum in Paris (The Offering of the Heart, circa 1410)
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010111577
18