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Well they basically contain many of the early, unpublished (but not always discarded) idears of Tolkien. Describing them would be difficult. I am sure Galin could provide a much better account of them but you really need to experience them first hand.

Does it say anything about the Dagor Dagorath in the books?

One will find references to the 'Great Wrack' in The Book of Lost Tales (and the Great End incidentally): '... and now the love of that brother and sister is very fair; but Turambar indeed shall stand beside Fionwë in the Great Wrack, and Melko and his drakes shall curse the sword of Mormakil.'

Ack spoilers! Read on if you dare

Tolkien's style of writing was very different at this time, and not unexpectedly there are plenty of differences in the tales themselves compared to later versions. You will recognize 'similarities' of course, but they do not exist within  'Frodo's Middle-earth', so to speak, for this Middle-earth with Hobbits, Gandalf, Galadriel... had yet to be 'discovered' of course.

Many people will recommend The Book of Lost Tales for the prose version of the Fall of Gondolin alone for example. While a great read, in any case it's not the version Tolkien himself would have published decades later, and a comparison to the later but abandoned 'Fall of Gondolin' (as far as it goes anyway) published in Unfinished Tales is quite interesting actually. It's 'comparing Tolkiens' so to speak.

*spoiler examples*

Christopher Tolkien notes in The Book of Lost Tales there were no 'Elder Days' ending in the drowning of Beleriand (no other Ages of the World even), the Elves were still 'fairies', the princes of the Noldor have scarcely emerged, nor the Sindar. Beren is an Elf (complicated subject actually), and the precursor of Sauron (in the role of Beren's captor) is a large cat inhabited by a fiend. The Dwarves are evil, the languages of the Elves are different, for some notable examples.

On the other hand there were things that would endure, things that would 'survive', or survive in some form, in the subsequent stages of invention and transformation. Christopher explains it better perhaps:

'Moreover in the history of the history of Middle-earth the development was seldom by outright rejection -- far more often it was the subtle transformation in stages, so that the growth of the legends (the process, for instance, by which the Nargothrond story made contact with that of Beren and Luthien, a contact not even hinted at in the Lost Tales, though both elements were present) can seem like the growth of legends among peoples, the product of many minds and generations.' Christopher Tolkien

Tolkien began the work 1916-17 but left it incomplete several years later, turning to the composition of long poems: for example the alliterative verse The Children of Hurin. Later Tolkien made a 'Sketch' (brief synopsis) in 1926, and further prose versions developed from this Sketch into the Qenta Noldorinwa and the Quenta Silmarillion of 1937 (other traditions existed too, like the Annals).

Of course this is a very brief and incomplete look! but might help put the early Book of Lost Tales into some context with respect to textual evolution.

Galin

Iarwain Ben adar I would be willing to to send you an email with an attachment of the Entire HoME Series. Would you be Interested?

Providing your not spreading it onto the internet and keep it to your computer Copyright doesn't apply.

This was send by a friend from his computer to mine via email. If you feel that I am in error, I wish you would communicate it to me. I am really a nice person and definitely would not byte you.