J.R.R. 托爾金（J.R.R.Tolkien），英國文豪，天纔的語言學傢，生於1892年1月3日，1925年開始擔任牛津大學教授。他創造瞭一係列膾炙人口的中洲世界史詩，影響最為深遠的是《霍比特人》和《魔戒》。這兩部巨作，被譽為當代奇幻作品的鼻祖。1972年3月28日，托爾金獲英國女王伊利莎白二世頒發的大英帝國指揮官勛章。

托爾金於1973年9月2日在牛津逝世。托爾金死後，其作品聲名未減，至今已暢銷2.5億餘冊，《魔戒》在英國Waterstones書店和第四頻道閤辦的票選活動中被選為20世紀之書，被亞馬遜網絡書店票選為兩韆年以來最重要的書籍。

Although The Silmarillion takes place in the same imaginary world as J.J.R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and was originally published four years after the author's death and over two decades after the former book, it is set much earlier, in the First Age of the World. The tales and the book which reads as a fusion between a story collection and historical chronicle, are a matter of legend even to the characters of The Lord of the Rings:

In the beginning Eru, the One, who in the Elvish tongue is named Ilúvatar, made the Ainur of his thought; and they made a great Music before him

Tolkien wrote the heart of this material very early in his career, and continued to work on it throughout his life. It fell to his son, Christopher Tolkien, to edit it into book form, and such proved the unquenchable public appetite that he subsequently oversaw 12 volumes of The History of Middle-Earth. This edition features 20 highly evocative colour plates by Ted Nasmith, themselves worth the price of admission, while reinforcing the sense of a historical work are genealogical tables, an extensive index, appendix and colour map. Far removed from the genial style of The Hobbit, this is Tolkien at his most formal, his prose austere, poetically beautiful, his storytelling capturing the epic scale, high drama and melancholy wonder of myth. These stories of elves and heroes and old gods are quite literally the foundation of the entire modern fantasy-publishing revival, and are therefore essential reading. --Gary S. Dalkin -