J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion was first published in 1977.
The volume appeared four years after Tolkien’s death, with Christopher Tolkien serving as its editor. It brought together stories and mythological material that Tolkien had been developing since the First World War and continued revising throughout his life.
Unlike The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion was not completed as a final, publication-ready book by Tolkien himself. Its contents include “Ainulindalë,” “Valaquenta,” “Quenta Silmarillion,” “Akallabêth,” and “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age.” Readers sometimes place its publication in the 1930s or 1950s because many of its underlying stories predate Tolkien’s best-known novels, but the collected book was released only in 1977.