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The earlier volumes of the series are referred to as I (The Book of Lost Tales Part I), II (The Book of Lost Tales Part II), III (The Lays of Beleriand), and IV (The Shaping of Middle-earth). The sixth volume now in preparation will concern the evolution of The Lord of the Rings.

The tables illustrating The Lhammas are reproduced with the permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, who kindly supplied photographs.

I list here for convenience the abbreviations used in the book in reference to various works (for a fuller account see pp. 107–8).

Texts in Vol. IV:

SThe Sketch of the Mythology or ‘earliest Silmarillion’.QThe Quenta (‘Quenta Noldorinwa’), the second version of ‘The Silmarillion’.AV 1The earliest Annals of Valinor.AB 1The earliest Annals of Beleriand (in two versions, the second early abandoned).

Texts in Vol. V:

FNFN IFN IIAV 2The second version of the Annals of Valinor.AB 2The second version (or strictly the third) of the Annals of Beleriand.QSThe Quenta Silmarillion, the third version of ‘The Silmarillion’, nearing completion at the end of 1937.

Other works (Ambarkanta, Ainulindalë, Lhammas, The Lost Road) are not referred to by abbreviations.

In conclusion, I take this opportunity to notice and explain the erroneous representation of the Westward Extension of the first ‘Silmarillion’ Map in the previous volume (The Shaping of Middle-earth p. 228). It will be seen that this map presents a strikingly different appearance from that of the Eastward Extension on p. 231. These two maps, being extremely faint, proved impossible to reproduce from photographs supplied by the Bodleian Library, and an experimental ‘reinforcement’ (rather than re-drawing) of a copy of the Westward Extension was tried out. This I rejected, and it was then found that my photocopies of the originals gave a result sufficiently clear for the purpose. Unhappily, the rejected ‘reinforced’ version of the Westward Extension map was substituted for the photocopy. (Photocopies were also used for diagram III on p. 247 and map V on p. 251, where the originals are in faint pencil.)