A stunning hardcover boxed set celebrating J.R.R. Tolkien’s work inspired by the myths and legends of Europe, featuring double-sided dustjackets. This unique set contains Finn and Hengest, The Story of Kullervo, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun and The Battle of Maldon, along with The Old English Exodus, reprinted for the first time in 50 years. This brand-new boxed set of five hardbacks includes: The Old English Exodus, a translation of the Old English Exodus poem telling the story of the Israelites fleeing Egypt, appearing in print for the first time since it was first published in the 1980s. Finn and Hengest, the tale of two fifth-century heroes in Northern Europe, is told both in Beowulf and in a fragmentary Anglo-Saxon poem known as The Fight at Finnesburg, but so obscurely and allusively that its interpretation had been a matter of controversy for over 100 years. Tolkien reveals a classic tragedy of divided loyalties, vengeance, blood and death. The Story of Kullervo is a work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father. ‘Hapless Kullervo’, as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny, and is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. Set ‘In Britain’s land beyond the seas’ during the Age of Chivalry, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun tells of a childless Breton Lord and Lady and the tragedy that befalls them when Aotrou seeks to remedy their situation with the aid of a magic potion obtained from a corrigan, or malevolent fairy. In 991 AD, vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defence-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack was immortalized in the poem, The Battle of Maldon. Written shortly after the battle, the poem survives now as a 325-line fragment, and is an invaluable example of both a heroic tale and the vivid expression of the lost language of our ancestors.
