Morgoth’s Ring

Volume Ten of the History of Middle-earth presents the later evolution of the mythology of the First Age, covering the period after the completion of The Lord of the Rings when Tolkien turned his attention back to the Silmarillion material.

The volume traces the development of what Christopher Tolkien calls the Later Quenta Silmarillion, revealing how Tolkien's cosmological thinking deepened and in some cases changed fundamentally -- including major reworkings of the Valaquenta, the myths of creation, and the nature of Morgoth.

The title refers to a crucial theological concept Tolkien developed in this period: that Morgoth, unlike Sauron, dispersed his power into the very substance of Arda itself, making his evil inseparable from the matter of the world.