Previously unpublished poems by fantasy author JRR Tolkien are about to go into print.
Tolkien, who lived in Oxford, became famous for writing The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings.
He struggled to publish his poetry collections during his career, although he included nearly 100 poems in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings.
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Now, half a century after his death, 70 previously unpublished poems are to be made available in a landmark publication.
The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien will be published by HarperCollins next month, featuring more than 195 of his poems.
His son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, had wanted his father’s poetic talent to be better known and, before his own death in 2020, worked on the project with two leading Tolkien experts, husband and wife Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond.
Mr Hammond told the Observer that there are “remarkably good” unpublished poems in the collection.
He added: “This will show even more Tolkien’s love of language, his love of words.”
Ms Scull said: “The poems will add more to our view of Tolkien as a creative writer.”
The texts ranged from “beautiful calligraphy to the worst scrawl”, Mr Hammond said.
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During the First World War, Tolkien had been a signals officer with the Lancashire Fusiliers when he was posted to France and saw action on the Somme.
In late 1916, he was invalided home with trench fever.
The unpublished material includes war poems, metaphorical works that are concerned with life, loss, faith and friendship rather than trenches and battles.
Ms Scull was particularly moved by an unfinished poem, The Empty Chapel, about a lone soldier hearing marching feet and drumming.
In the introduction to the book the editors write: "Because his most commercially successful writings, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have had so many readers, and because they include between them nearly one 100 poems (depending on how one counts), Tolkien’s skill as a poet ought to be already well known.
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“Many who enjoy his stories of Middle-earth pass over their poems very quickly or avoid them altogether, either in haste to get on with the prose narrative or because they dislike poetry in general, or think they do.
"It is their loss, for they are missing elements integral to the stories which help to drive their plots and contribute to character and mood.”
The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien is published by HarperCollins on September 12, price £90.
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