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They are included at my father's explicit intention, and by their inclusion the entire history is set forth from the Music of the Ainur in which the world began to the passing of the Ringbearers from the Havens of Mithlond at the end of the Third Age. The Ainulindalë and Valaquenta, which are given at the beginning, are indeed closely associated with The Silmarillion but the Akallabêth and Of the Rings of Power, are (it must be emphasised) wholly separate and independent. The book, thought entitled as it must be The Silmarillion, contains not only the Quenta Silmarillion or Silmarillion proper, but also four other short works. In all that time The Silmarillion, considered simply as a narrative structure, underwent little radical change it became long ago a fixed tradition, and background to later writings. But it was never published (though some indication of its contents could be gleaned from The Lord of the Rings), and throughout my father's long life he never abandoned it, nor ceased even in his last years to work on it.

Indeed, although it was not then called The Silmarillion, it was already in being half a century ago and in battered notebooks extending back to 1917 can still be read the earliest versions, often hastily pencilled, of the central stories of the mythology. Not only, however, does The Silmarillion relate the events of a far earlier time than those of The Lord of the Rings it is also, in all the essentials of its conception, far the earlier work.

In The Lord of the Rings were narrated the great events at the end of the Third Age but the tales of The Silmarillion are legends deriving from a much deeper past, when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils. The Silmarillion, now published four years after the death of its author, is an account of the Elder Days, or the First Age of the World. Taken from Christopher Tolkien's foreword to The Silmarillion