Each volume of The History of Middle-earth bears on the title page spread an inscription by Christopher Tolkien in Fëanorian letters (in Tengwar, an alphabet J. R. R. Tolkien devised for the High-Elves), that describes the contents of the book. The inscription in Volume XII reads: This is the last volume of the work of Christopher Tolkien in which he has collected a great part of all that his father John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote of Middle-earth and Valinor. In this book is traced the devising of the history of the later ages in the Northwest of Middle-earth after the Great Battle and the Fall of Morgoth.