R. R. TOLKIEN @page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } PART FIVE MYTHS TRANSFORMED 367 Appendix: Synopsis of the Texts 432 Index 434 FOREWORD The Quenta Silmarillion, with the Ainulindalë, the Annals of Valinor, and the Annals of Beleriand, as they stood when my father began The Lord of the Rings at the end of 1937, were published six years ago in The Lost Road and Other Writings. That was the first great break in the continuous development of The Silmarillion from its origins in The Book of Lost Tales; but while one may indeed regret that matters fell out as they did just at that time, when the Quenta Silmarillion was in sight of the end, it was not in itself disastrous. Although, as will be seen in Part One of this book, a potentially destructive doubt had emerged before my father finished work on The Lord of the Rings, nonetheless in the years that immediately followed its completion he embarked on an ambitious remaking and enlargement of all the Matter of the Elder Days, without departure from the essentials of the original structure.
