The Earliest 'Silmarillion'

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The Shaping of Middle-earth chapters
Prose Fragments The Earliest 'Silmarillion' The Quenta The First 'Silmarillion' Map The Ambarkanta The Earliest Annals of Valinor The Earliest Annals of Beleriand

The Earliest 'Silmarillion' is the second chapter of The Shaping of Middle-earth.

Also known as the Sketch of the Mythology, it is the 'first' version of The Silmarillion, written in 1926 by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Originally written as an outline to explain the background to the alliterative 'The Children of Hurin' to Tolkien's old tutor and friend R.W. Reynolds, it later became the basis from which all work on the Legendarium derived.

While only 28 pages long, the narrative in the Sketch advances a great deal from The Book of Lost Tales Part One, approaching the final form in most respects, albeit extremely condensed. It was superseded by the Quenta Noldorinwa in 1930.