Fairy-stories are not just for children, as anyone who has read Tolkien will know. In his essay 'On Fairy-Stories', Tolkien discusses the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy and rescues the genre from those who would relegate it to juvenilia. The haunting short story, 'Leaf by Niggle', recounts the story of the artist, Niggle, who has ‘a long journey to make’ and is seen as an allegory of Tolkien’s life. Written in the same period when 'The Lord of the Rings' was beginning to take shape, these two works show Tolkien's mastery and understanding of the art of sub-creation, the power to give fantasy 'the inner consistency of reality'.

This edition contains a Preface by Christopher Tolkien; the poem 'Mythopoeia', in which the author Philomythus, 'Lover of Myth', confounds the opinion of Misomythus, 'Hater of Myth'; and 'The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth', Professor Tolkien's dramatic poem which takes up the story following the disastrous Battle of Maldon in 991, where the English Commander Beorhtnoth was killed. The night after the fight two servants of the Duke come to the battlefield to retrieve their master's body. Searching amongst the slain they converse in unheroic terms, about the battle, their 'needlessly noble' master and the wastefulness of war. In an illuminating essay accompanying the poem Tolkien wrote of the complex motives that inspired Berohtnoth's conduct at Maldon.

'The book must be read… it goes far to explain the nature of his art and justify his success'
The Cambridge Review

'A haunting and successful demonstration of the qualities of faerie'
New York Times

'While springing from deep-rooted convictions, his art has imaginative magic of a very rare quality'
Birmingham Post