Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Beren and Lúthien
    Beren and Lúthien
    Beren and Lúthien
    Audiobook6 hours

    Beren and Lúthien

    Written by J. R. R. Tolkien

    Narrated by Timothy West and Samuel West

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Presented for the first time on audio, the epic tale of Beren and Lúthien will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves, Men and Orcs and the rich landscape unique to Tolkien’s Middle-earth in this unabridged recording read by critically acclaimed father and son, Timothy and Samuel West.

    Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, was deeply opposed to Beren, and imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien.

    Undaunted by Lord Thingol’s challenge, Beren and Lúthien embark on the supremely heroic attempt to rob Morgoth, the greatest of all evil beings, of a Silmaril, one of the hallowed jewels that adorn the Black Enemy’s crown.

    The tale of Beren and Lúthien, which was written shortly after J.R.R. Tolkien returned from the Battle of the Somme in 1916, was an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion. In this book Christopher Tolkien has extracted the various versions of Beren and Lúthien from the comprehensive work in which they are embedded.

    To show something of the process whereby this Great Tale of Middle-earth evolved over the years, he tells the story in his father's own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed. Presented together for the first time, they reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 30, 2020
    ISBN9780008214234
    Author

    J. R. R. Tolkien

    J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was a distinguished academic, though he is best known for writing The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, plus other stories and essays. His books have been translated into over sixty languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide.

    More audiobooks from J. R. R. Tolkien

    Related to Beren and Lúthien

    Related audiobooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Crowing Glory

      Mar 12, 2020

      Crowing Glory
      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Chronicling Life’s White Machine

      Jul 31, 2017

      It is not hard to mentally recast writers as social media types: Knausgaard, the maximalist oversharer; Lerner, the pomo ironic; Cusk, the reticent philosopher; Heti, the more traditional diarist.   The post Chronicling Life’s White Machine appeared

      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Novelists Pushing The Bloat Out

      Feb 29, 2024

      THE ART OF OMISSION SEEMS TO BE UNfashionable in fiction these days. Word-bloat and page-plumping are the literary crises of our age. It’s not hard to see where this might come from. First, there is the same misguided view of value for money that lea

      6 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Jan 5, 2024

      ISBN: 978-1641893916 ARC Humanities Press | Past Imperfect, 2022 $17.95 (paperback) www.arc-humanities.org Andrew Schell's Beowulf: A Poem is the kind of book that fans of the poem have long needed. Beyond the other specialties and disciplines that i

      6 min read

    • Article

      Babel

      Aug 10, 2022

      Babel
      2 min read

    • Article

      Head Boy And Head-scratchers

      Sep 29, 2022

      AUTUMN IS WHEN THE LITERARY establishment comes out to play, and publishers release books by their most prestigious names. The reasons are lost in time, but it may be connected to the end of summer: fun is over, they say, time to read some serious bo

      6 min read

    • Article

      On Literature and Consciousness

      Feb 18, 2021

      This is the greatest opening line in imaginative literature, because it’s the first one ever written. How can the invention of fiction itself be topped? The post On Literature and Consciousness appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      An Element of Perversity: The Millions Interviews Katharine Kilalea

      Aug 30, 2018

      OK, Mr. Field—the debut novel from the South African-born, London-based writer Katharine Kilalea—is the story of a man and a house. Mr. Field, a concert pianist who lives in London, suffers a wrist injury after a performance of Chopin’s “Raindrop Pre

      8 min read

    • Article

      Questions Of Narrative

      Feb 2, 2023

      Questions Of Narrative
      5 min read

    • Article

      Historical Fiction

      Aug 14, 2019

      Historical Fiction
      11 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “Autumn Sunshine”

      Feb 7, 2023

      Sometimes I think I ask too much of short stories. I will forgive a lot of flaws in novels, for novels are an essentially imperfectible artform. Novels are, almost in their DNA, meant to be baggy, digressive, overlong, and even to some extent incoher

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Voice of Our Own: Debra Jo Immergut in Conversation with Lisa Gornick

      Feb 11, 2019

      There is no correct way to be a writer: We each have to find our own way that works for our personality and within our circumstances. The post A Voice of Our Own: Debra Jo Immergut in Conversation with Lisa Gornick appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Was Arthur historical?

      Dec 3, 2020

      Man or Myth Tony Sullivan Pen & Sword 2020 Hb, 246pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781526763679 Perhaps no figure blurs the line between myth and history as much as King Arthur. Was there an historical Arthur, and if so how much does he resemble his literary counte

      8 min read

    • Article

      Estates Of Denial?

      Dec 23, 2020

      Regarding Corinne Fowler’s feature The Colonial Secrets of Britain’s Stately Homes (December), as well as letters and comments I’ve read on the subject, there’s something I’d like to say. As a history graduate who is as passionate about studying acad

      1 min read

    • Article

      Intriguing And Diverse

      Jun 16, 2022

      Genius of the Fern Loved Gully Amy Hale Strange Attractor Press 2020 Pb, 336pp, £20, ISBN 9781907222863 Ithell Colquhoun’s star is in the ascendant. Born in India in 1906, she lived a life amongst the Surrealists in the Thirties and early Forties, ha

      9 min read

    • Article

      Apply Aesthetic Pressure to the Language: An Interview with Paul Harding

      Jun 18, 2018

      This interview first appeared in Chinese at the Shanghai Review of Books on June 3, 2018. I spent my first Iowan winter day at home reading Tinkers, the 2010 Pulitzer Fiction Prize winner. Outside, snow began to fall. I poured myself a cup of hot tea

      19 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Daniel Levin Becker

      Dec 17, 2019

      This year, I read in twos. Maybe this is always happening and I just started noticing. I also have a brain that’s unrepentantly hungry for patterns, so who knows. The post A Year in Reading: Daniel Levin Becker appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Beren and Lúthien

    4/5

    289 ratings17 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      The greatest romance story of the Middle Earth, as envisaged by Tolkien’s real life story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Except for the first hour or so, this book seems to be for hardcore fans of Tolkien. As a casual Tolkien's reader, I did no really enjoy it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Another great book by the legendary J R R Tolkien
    • 5/5
      Excellent book. Well narrated and a wonderful insight from Christopher Tolkien
    • 4/5
      Excellent look back at earlier times in tolkiens universe.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting story (or more accurately stories) of Beren and Luthien, many of them told in beautiful verse form. J.R.R. Tolkien never lived to publish this or many of his stories, but thankfully his son Christopher has perused many documents and salvaged these stories.

      None of the material is new, as Christopher confesses early in the book, but it is compiled into a conceive manner, focusing on this topic, which was one of the central themes of the 1st age, covered in The Simarillion and other compilations.

      I think I especially enjoyed this book having read The Simarillion before, as well as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (many time respectively). Note that this story is quite different from The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, but these stories have root in the story of Beren and Luthien.
    • 5/5
      I think this is Christopher's finest job in putting together his father's works in a cohesive, easily understandable format. I have struggled with the Histories and The Lost Tales but this book pulled me right through it. Thank you Mr Tolkien!!!
    • 3/5
      For dedicated lovers of Tolkien, this book fills in some of the older lore. For everyone else, it my not hold a great deal of interest. If you've read nothing more than The Lord Of The Rings and you want more, I might suggest The Silmarillon or even The Fall Of Gondolin first, then circle back to this one.As with all the more recent Tolkien books edited by Christopher Tolkien, this one gives over a lot of pages for the preface and numerous explanations and explorations of the history of the work - the various versions and revisions, and why and when Tolkien wrote them. This may not appeal to everyone.A significant amount of this book is also in poetry form, which isn't for me personally but I'm happy to skim over it.If you're a dedicated Tolkien fan, you'll love it - just don't buy it expecting a single 260-page story.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is a collection of all of the versions of the story of Luthien and Beren that have been publishes or haven't been published before. They are collected by Christopher Tolkien from his father's notes. Included are 4 versions of the tale, written and revised by J. R. R. Tolkien into the version that appears in The Silmarillion. Also included are notes on how the tale developed over time, with fascinating quotes on Tolkien's work. The tale of Beren and Luthien is referred to in the Lord of the Rings when Strider tells the story to the Hobbits. Its likely the Hobbits knew the story anyway and also clear that Aragorn tells the tale because his story is the 3rd union of Elves and Men, where Beren and Luthien were the first. A tragic tale of love and heroism, clearly Aragorn hopes to emulate Beren - but with a happier ending. This story also includes some great non-human characters - Tevoldo, Lord of Cats and Huan, Captain of Dogs. How can you beat that?
    • 5/5
      Christopher Tolkien has done an excellent job of compiling the Beren and Luthien material into a cohesive tale. Organised more according to chronology of the tale, rather than in the order that the separate bits were written, there is a definite sense of travelling through the lives and deeds of Beren and Luthien (and its consequences), whilst still getting a good idea of how the tale evolved from one form to another. To be sure, to my mind, the tale of Beren and Luthien is one of the best and certainly one of my favourite tales from the legendarium, which doesn't hurt in the least. Alan Lee's illustrations are as stunning as they get, with many pencil drawings interspersed as well as several full-coloured plates.
    • 5/5
      Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkien is one of the Tales of the Elder Days as touched upon in The Silmarillion.Beren and Lúthien is another story that finally has seen the light of day. I loved reading this tale and learning more about other characters in Tolkien's world. In addition, the poems were beautiful with beautiful prose. I had not realized what an amazing poet Tolkien was. This was an added treat for me.I highly recommend anyone who loves Tolkien's work to read this. You will not be disappointed.
    • 5/5
      The story of Beren and Luthien is explored through the different editing done by Tolkien, as compiled by his son Christopher. It was interesting to see how the story progressed and changed through time. I knew the basic story from my reading of other Tolkien books, but I found the telling of this tale particularly good in this book. If you're a Tolkien fan, you will want to add this to your collection.
    • 3/5
      I'm among the readers who were disappointed with this book. The actual story of Beren and Luthien is only a small portion of the book. I enjoyed it very much though I felt it was more a story for children in the mode of The Hobbit. Most of the book is filled with scraps of other notations made by JRR Tolkien and the usual addendum you find in Tolkien books. I expected something more like The Silmarillion or The Children of Hurin. Also, I'm past the point in my life where I want to write in Dwarvish or runes so deciphering the bits of notations to tie them back to past stories doesn't interest me.
    • 5/5
      Beren and Lúthien, J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, 2017Christopher, son of JRR writes that this will probably be his last effort at editing his father's works...he's 92 as of the publication of this book. Wikipedia says "Tolkien followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a lecturer and tutor in English Language at New College, Oxford, from 1964 to 1975" thus indicating that he shared much of his father's love for English and its history. In fact, he's so well steeped in the mythology and style of his father's works that his annotations read like an extract from the stories themselves.This book gathers together the various references to, and versions of, Beren and Lúthien and presents them—a prose version and a poetic version—with explanatory side-notes. These two versions tell the same story, but with interesting variations in some details as a result of the hit-and-miss attention that Tolkien paid to the works at different times over the years (with the interruption of WWII).Additionally, some of the intriguing references to other characters in the story get fleshed out by inclusion of other tales and other histories dealing with the same time frame of the main story. For example, the references to the history of Huan, the wolfhound that saves the heroes many times over; and Beren's forebears; and the results of the terrible oath that is taken by the sons of the creator of the Silmarils.As much as possible Christopher tries to tie everything into neat packages, but is ultimately defeated by the fact, not just that JRR changed names and heritages of his characters during his life but that he actually stopped working on many of the stories, for various reasons over the many years. It's to Christopher's credit that he doesn't try to fabricate endings, but leaves them as stories, the knowledge of which, has passed from the memory of man.As I said, the fact that Christopher seems to have assumed some of the writing style of his father makes it difficult at times to determine which comments are his and which are the stories themselves. (The book is actually printed with the explanatory comments indented from the stories themselves, so it IS possible to tell which is which.) But if, like me, you get caught up in the narrative you may not readily notice this.As a warning, let it be noted that these are not fairy tales for children—they deal with some pretty horrific evils. Fortunately the tortures are not described in gruesome detail, but they are described: e.g. to get information from the elves Morgoth has captured he has his wolves kill and eat them, one by one, in front of the others, until someone should talk.
    • 3/5
      While fascinating to see how Tolkien developed his mythos.... this is a bit of a slog, especially compared to some of the other esoteric "Tales of" or other posthumous pieces of Middle-Earth/Tolkien lore (like Return of the Shadow, Children of Huren, etc.). This is very much a precursor to The Simarillion (which I have yet to read), and from all accounts, its a bit like reading a Latin textbook.... with names thrown about, and with two names per person, or conflicting names and places, etc.

      The actual story parts are interesting and enjoyable. The preambles and stuff, not-so-much.
    • 4/5
      In Beren and Lúthien Christopher Tolkien explores the evolution of his father's story of The Tale of Beren and Lúthien from the original The Lay of Leithian through the Tale of Tinúviel to its final form, which appeared as chapter XIX of The Silmarillion. Unlike The Children of Húrin, in which Christopher Tolkien expanded Chapter XXI of J.R.R. Tolkien's Quenta Silmarillion into a full novel, this work primarily examines how the ideas of Beren, once an elf and later a man, and Lúthien, once called Tinúviel, crystallized. The overall effect is something that will primarily appeal to Tolkien scholars, although the story itself and Tolkien's use of verse are enjoyable to casual readers. Christopher Tolkien fills in background as necessary, such as the significance of the Silmarils and why Beren must steal one from Morgoth. The longest self-contained portion of this book comes from The Lay of Leithian and reads like the epic poem J.R.R. Tolkien intended. Alan Lee, who did the art for The Children of Húrin, continues to capture visually the tone of Tolkien's text. Lee's portrayal of Tinúviel confronting Tevildo, a giant cat in Melko's (Melkor) castle, is delightful all on its own, making it a pity that Tevildo did not continue into later of Tolkien's drafts. Fans of The Silmarillion will enjoy this, but should not expect a coherent narrative.
    • 4/5
      You'll want to take my comments on this one with more than a grain of salt, as I have trouble being objective when it comes to Tolkien, and the story of Beren and Luthien hits me in a soft spot (my younger brother's middle name is Beren, and my sister's is Lorien -- Tolkien was big in my family). This is one of the stories that Sam Gamgee might have been referring to when he and Frodo are traveling to Mount Doom and Sam talks about the adventures in the great legends,”Folk seem to have just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid out that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end.” Beren and Luthien's story, for which we get here a couple choices of endings, was foundational in Tolkien's mythology, echoing aspects of his own life, and within his works in the romance of Aragorn and Arwen. As Christopher Tolkien reminds us,”my father called it 'the chief of the stories of the Silmarillion', and he said of Beren that he is 'the outlawed mortal who succeeds (with the help of Luthien, a mere maiden even if an elf of royalty) where all the armies and warriors have failed: he penetrates the stronghold of the Enemy and wrests one of the Silmarilli from the Iron Crown. Thus he wins the hand of Luthien and the first marriage of mortal and immortal is achieved.”Tolkien apparently began work on the story in 1917, and continued playing with it at least until some point in the 1930's, so there were several versions, as well as additions to both ends of the story, and snippets to be (maybe) inserted at various places. Christopher Tolkien, this book's editor/compiler does a really excellent job of organizing this material so that even readers who are not familiar with the entire mythology of which the story of Beren and Luthien is a part won't feel lost. Or, at least, very lost. The story is presented, mainly, in two works, these being supplemented by additions and variations from other pieces. The first is the earlier form, and is in prose, and the second, broken into sections, is in verse. Both have their charms. I'll admit a preference for the earlier prose version, which is shorter, has little or no swooning, and is, at a few points, laugh-out-loud funny. I was having a little trouble staying focused on the poetic version until I started reading it out loud, with proper dramatic feeling, to my dog. Boy did that help! And my dog, who claims that there are far too few works of epic poetry with dog heroes, loved it! If I set the book aside for a bit he'd start poking me with his sweet wet nose and asking, hopefully, “Isn't it time to get back to the exciting adventures of Huan the Wonderdog?” And, really, he's not exaggerating. Huan may only get second billing on the marquee (well, his picture's on the cover, anyway), but he is the awesomest. Not only is he an amazing warrior, but he's better at planning missions than any of the men or elves he works with, and he has an expert knowledge of healing herbs! Like Aragorn, except tougher, fluffier, and you can ride on his back. As I said, the prose version, The Tale of Tinuviel, comes from The Book of Lost Tales, and is loads of fun. Luthien Tinuviel is very fine heroine – brave, resourceful, etc. – and Beren is no slouch. Though of course it's not primarily humorous, there are some really funny bits, and little of that excessively “high” tone which sometimes leads the more hobbit-like of readers to feel drowsy. Initially this had something of the feel of Norse myth to me, but once I got farther in I decided it might have hints of the Kalevala, a Finnish story. We have giant magical cats and dogs, monstrous wolves... Wait. I just have to say, that Telvido, Prince of the Cats, who disappears in the longer, poetic version is too great a villain to miss. I wish he were on the book cover too.The longer, though incomplete, version of the story is from “The Lay of Leithian.” This is, as I said, Tolkien in his high-toned, archaic style (which sometimes feels a little over the top, but then you come across an amazing word like “quook,” which is, deliciously, the past tense of “quake” and is just what you want to rhyme with “shook,” when you are describing an earthquake, and you forgive him all his excesses). Tolkien never finished any of this stuff to his satisfaction, so it seems unfair to pick much about rhymes and word choices he certainly would have improved upon, given enough time, and the story itself is really grand. Huan the Wonderdog is great in The Tale of Tinuviel, but here he is revealed in all his brilliance. Really, you'll love him. And Luthien and Beren are just as brave and loving and noble as you could ask for. There are romantic vistas, gloomy swamps, dank dungeons, true love, and tragic deaths – the works. Also beautiful colored plates and generous numbers of line drawings. I enjoyed the book very much.