Ring Cycle

Lost Tolkien to be Published

Tells intricate story of Norse legends.

For those who have waded through J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Hobbit and his Lord of the Rings trilogy and still crave for more, HarperCollins have bought the rights to an unpublished work by the master storyteller. Written before The Hobbit, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, edited and introduced by Tolkien’s son Christopher, will be published in May next year. The work, written when Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University during the '20s and '30s, makes available for the first time the author’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and the Fall of the Niflungs. Little is known about about the new work, though it may be that Sigurd's slaying of the dragon Fafnir was in Tolkien's mind when he wrote the encounter between Bilbo and Smaug in The Hobbit.