Tolkien's son edits unfinished work ready for release

Published on Tuesday 19 September 2006 00:40

AN UNFINISHED tale by JRR Tolkien has been edited by his son into a completed work and will be released next spring.

Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on The Children of Hurin, an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned.

Excerpts of The Children of Hurin, which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and other works, have been published before.

"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of The Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers," Mr Tolkien said.

The new book will be published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States and HarperCollins in Britain.

JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy has sold more than 50 million copies and was also adapted into a blockbuster, Academy Award-winning trio of films.

• Hundreds of Hobbit hopefuls queued round the block yesterday for the chance to play the hairy-footed creatures in the stage show of The Lord Of The Rings.

The budding actors and actresses, who complied with a height restriction of being under 5ft 7in, had just a matter of seconds to impress directors during the auditions at the Theatre Royal in central London.

They were competing to be one of 20 hobbits in the 25 million adaptation of the classic trilogy which will receive its British and European premiere in London next June.