On 26 September 2019 Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer edited by John M. Bowers is to be published by Oxford University Press.
Details of Tolkien’s work on a Clarendon Press edition of Chaucer was probably brought to many Tolkien’s fans’ attention in Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull’s Companion & Guide.
From the publisher: Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer uncovers the story of an unpublished and previously unknown book by the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked between 1922 and 1928 on his Clarendon edition Selections from Chaucer’s Poetry and prose, and though never completed, its 160 pages of commentary reveals much of his thinking about language and storytelling when he was still at the threshold of his career as an epoch-making writer of fantasy literature. Drawing upon other new materials such as his edition of the Reeve’s Tale and his Oxford lectures on the Pardoner’s Tale, this book reveals Chaucer as a major influence upon Tolkien’s literary imagination.
About the author: John M. Bowers is an internationally known scholar of medieval English literature with books on Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain poet.
The book is available to pre-order now.
