iThe Book of Lost Tales iwas the first major work of imagination by J.R.R. Tolkien, begun in 1916-1917 when he was twenty-five years old and left incomplete several years later. It stands at the beginning of the entire conception of Middle-earth and Valinor, for the Lost Tales were the first form of the myths and legends that came to be called iThe Silmarillion.i Embedded in English legend and English association, they are set in the narrative frame of a great westward voyage over the Ocean by a mariner named Eriel or AElfwine to Tol Eressea, the Lonely Isle, where Elves dwelt from them he learned their true history, the Lost Tales of Elfinesse. In the Tales are found the earliest accounts and original ideas of Gods and Elves, Dwarves, Balrogs, and Orcs of the Silmarils and the Two Trees of Valinor of Nargothrond and Gondolin of the geography and cosmography of the invented world. piThe Book of Lost Talesi will be published in two volumes this first part contains the Tales of Valinor a