Q 01/05

Who edited and published The Silmarillion after his father's death?

A) Christopher Tolkien

B) Rayner Unwin

C) Humphrey Carpenter

D) Michael Tolkien

Answer · why

A) Christopher Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien later called it an error to have published the book with no framework explaining what it was, and he laid the drafts bare in the t...

Q 02/05

Which book followed The Silmarillion in 1980?

A) Roverandom

B) Unfinished Tales

C) Mr. Bliss

D) Beren and Lúthien

Answer · why

B) Unfinished Tales

Unfinished Tales took the opposite approach: where The Silmarillion smoothed the drafts into one story, it printed them much as Tolkien left them, gap...

Q 03/05

Which future fantasy novelist spent a year in Oxford helping Tolkien's son edit The Silmarillion?

A) Terry Brooks

B) Stephen R. Donaldson

C) Guy Gavriel Kay

D) Robert Jordan

Answer · why

C) Guy Gavriel Kay

Guy Gavriel Kay, then a Canadian philosophy student, got the job through a family connection, and a decade later published the first book of his own f...

Q 04/05

In The Silmarillion, what is the whole universe called, within which Arda is the world?

A) Valinor

B) Aman

C) Eldamar

D) Eä

Answer · why

D) Eä

Eä is the word Ilúvatar spoke to make the vision real: it is the Quenya verb 'to be', so the universe is named after the command that created it.

Q 05/05

Tolkien's publisher rejected an early draft of The Silmarillion as obscure and "too" what?

A) Celtic

B) Norse

C) Biblical

D) Finnish

Answer · why

A) Celtic

"Too Celtic" was the verdict, and the rejection pushed Tolkien to start a Hobbit sequel instead, which grew into The Lord of the Rings.