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J.R.R. Tolkien is most notably known for his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as the posthumously published The Silmarillion, which describes the mythology and history of Tolkien’s legendarium. Now, almost forty years since The Silmarillion was published, Tolkien fans will be delighted to know that the author’s estate is releasing new (100-year-old) material, previously unavailable to the public.

In 1914, more than twenty years before The Hobbit, Tolkien began The Story of Kullervo. Kullervo is a figure from the Finnish epic Kalevala, and is one of very few tragic characters in Finnish mythology. The epic itself is a familiar story: Kullervo is orphaned and raised by his evil uncle (think The Lion King), who isolates the child because of his magical talents (think Frozen), and along the way the character serves as a representation of Finnish independence (which somehow hasn’t made its way into the Disney universe yet).

However, Tolkien did not finish his interpretation of the epic. Rather, he continued his work as an Oxford don of comparative linguistics and philology. The Story of Kullervo merely provided Tolkien with a jumping-off point for his mythopoeic writing. His process for the ensuing Middle-earth novels stemmed from his philological research into myths, language and storytelling—which all intersected in the epic Kalevala.

Previously, the story was available only in Tolkien Studies: Volume 7. The book will be edited by Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger and published by HarperCollins. It will hit bookstore shelves in the United Kingdom on August 27th and in America on October 27th.

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Woody Steinken

I am a recent graduate of NYU, looking to pass my unemployed time writing. I am also a musician and composer.