J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumous book The Silmarillion first appeared in 1977.
Tolkien died in 1973, leaving behind many versions of the legends that became The Silmarillion. His son Christopher Tolkien edited the material and prepared it for publication, assisted by Guy Gavriel Kay. The finished book was released four years after Tolkien’s death.
The work describes the earliest history of Tolkien’s imagined world, from its creation through the great events of the First Age. It includes the Ainulindalë, Valaquenta, Quenta Silmarillion, and later material concerning the Second and Third Ages.
Readers sometimes expect The Silmarillion to resemble the narrative style of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Instead, it is a compressed mythological history assembled from texts written at different times. Its publication offered the public a much broader view of Tolkien’s underlying legendarium.