title: The Silmarillion
author:  J. R. R. Tolkien 
description: <P>John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd January, 1892 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, but at the age of four he and his brother were taken back to England by their mother. After his father's death the family moved to Sarehole, on the south-eastern edge of Birmingham. Tolkien spent a happy childhood in the countryside and his sensibility to the rural landscape can clearly be seen in his writing and his pictures.His mother died when he was only twelve and both he and his brother were made wards of the local priest and sent to King Edward's School, Birmingham, where Tolkien shone in his classical work. After completing a First in English Language and Literature at Oxford, Tolkien married Edith Bratt. He was also commissioned in the Lancashire Fusiliers and fought in the battle of the Somme. After the war, he obtained a post on the New English Dictionary and began to write the mythological and legendary cycle which he originally called The Book of Lost Tales but which eventually became known as The Silmarillion.In 1920 Tolkien was appointed Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds which was the beginning of a distinguished academic career culminating with his election as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Meanwhile Tolkien wrote for his children and told them the story of The Hobbit. It was his publisher, Stanley Unwin, who asked for a sequel to The Hobbit and gradually Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, a huge story that took twelve years to complete and which was not published until Tolkien was approaching retirement. After retirement Tolkien and his wife lived near Oxford, but then moved to Bournemouth. Tolkien returned to Oxford after his wife's death in 1971. He died on 2 September 1973 leaving The Silmarillion to be edited for publication by his son, Christopher.</P>
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  ![](index-1_1.jpg)
  
  
  The history of Middle-Earth
  
  
  THE SILMARILLION
  
  
  J.R.R. TOLKIEN
  
  
  AINULINDALE
  
  
  The Music of the Ainur
  
  
  There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the
  Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were
  with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them
  themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long
  while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest
  hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of me mind of Ilúvatar from
  which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but
  slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and
  increased in unison and harmony.
  
  
  And it came to pass that Ilúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared
  to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful
  than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the splen