J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion was first published posthumously in 1977. Christopher Tolkien edited the unfinished and widely varied materials, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, and arranged them into a coherent published work.
Tolkien died in 1973, leaving behind decades of writing about the earlier history of his imagined world. The Silmarillion describes the creation of the world, the divine Valar, the first Elves, and the wars against Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. Much of its material predates the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The title can mislead readers into expecting a conventional novel. The book is a collection of mythic histories, legends, genealogies, and explanatory sections. It includes the Ainulindalë, Valaquenta, Quenta Silmarillion, Akallabêth, and Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age. The 1980 book Unfinished Tales is a separate posthumous publication.