LOVE STORY
JRR Tolkien’s long-lost lovers Beren and Lúthien are finally receiving some attention
Chronicling the love affair between a mortal man and an immortal elf-maiden, JRR Tolkien alluded to the tale of Beren and Lúthien in both The Lord Of The Rings and The Silmarillion. Now a decade after the publication of the previously unfinished The Children of Húrin, his son Christopher Tolkien has compiled the numerous versions of Beren and Lúthien into one complete volume, which is illustrated by long-time Tolkien artist Alan Lee.
“The new book can be seen as a companion to The Children of Húrin, as it is another of the great story-cycles from the First Age of Middleearth,” says Lee, who had very little to go on when it came to capturing Beren and Lúthien.
“There wasn’t a lot of description of the characters in the text, so what little there is became very useful,” he explains. “I didn’t want to pin them down too solidly though, and working in pencil and the slightly elusive medium of watercolour – along with keeping the figures at a distance most of the time – was helpful. I’ve drawn quite a few elven princesses in the past, including Arwen, and did a watercolour of Lúthien for the illustrated edition of The Lord Of The Rings, so I’m sure those attempts influenced my approach.”
According to Lee, Beren and Lúthien play a small but vital part in the mythos of Middleearth as a whole. “It was a story that Tolkien kept going back to throughout his lifetime, treating it in different literary forms,” he says. “He also referred back to it in The Lord Of The
Rings, drawing a comparison between Beren and Lúthien, and Aragorn and Arwen. For me, the story has the best qualities of fairytales and romance as it features love at first sight, the impossible task, animal guides, hideous monsters and journeys to the underworld.”
Beren And Lúthien is published on 1 June.