So it's not a "new" story, but for those who've read it as published in The Silmarillion (I must admit I've never got around to that!!), it'd be interesting to see the original version and how it evolved as Tolkien's fantasy world and its history developed and grew. It's not clear from the article, but it does sound like this must have been one of the first pieces he wrote about what would become Middle-earth.A new book by Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien is going on sale - 100 years after it was first conceived.
Beren and Lúthien has been described as a "very personal story" that the Oxford professor thought up after returning from the Battle of the Somme.
It was edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and contains versions of a tale that became part of The Silmarillion.
I thought these comments from a Tolkien expert were especially moving:
Tolkien specialist John Garth, who wrote Tolkien And The Great War, said the Hobbit author used his writing like an "exorcism" of the horrors he witnessed in World War One.
He said: "When he came back from the trenches, with trench fever, he spent the winter [of 1916-1917] convalescing.
"He'd lost two of his dearest friends on the Somme and you can imagine he must have been inside as much of a wreck as he was physically."
Mr Garth said on a walk in an East Yorkshire wood Tolkien's wife Edith danced in a glade filled with white flowers, which became the key scene in Beren and Lúthien.
He said: "Mr Tolkien felt the kind of joy he must have felt at times he would never feel again."
The names Beren and Lúthien are carved on the gravestone Tolkien and his wife share in Wolvercote cemetery in Oxford.