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Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth is a collection of stories and essays by J. R. R. Tolkien that were never completed during his lifetime, but were edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1980. Many of the tales within are retold in The Silmarillion, albeit in modified forms; the work also contains a summary of the events of The Lord of the Rings told from a less personal perspective.
The collection received a cautious welcome from scholars and critics. They noted Christopher Tolkien's warning that a good knowledge of the background was needed to gain much from the stories. Others noted that the stories were among the best of Tolkien's writing; Warren Dunn expressed a wish for the whole of the history in such a format. The book, with its commentary, was commercially successful, indicating a market for more of Tolkien's work and leading to the 12-volume The History of Middle-earth.
On "The Quest of Erebor" in Part Three, Christine Barkley comments that the perspective is the knowledgeable Gandalf's, contrasting sharply with the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins's narrower point of view in The Hobbit. Peter Jackson used the story to enrich the narrative for his 2013 film .
As with The Silmarillion, Tolkien's son Christopher edited and published Unfinished Tales before he had finished his study of the materials in his father's archive. Unfinished Tales provides more detailed information about characters, events and places mentioned only briefly in The Lord of the Rings. Versions of such tales, including the origins of Gandalf and the other Istari (Wizards), the death of Isildur and the loss of the One Ring in the Gladden Fields, and the founding of the kingdom of Rohan, help expand knowledge about Middle-earth.
The commercial success of Unfinished Tales demonstrated that the demand for Tolkien's stories several years after his death was not only present but growing. Encouraged by the result, Christopher Tolkien embarked upon the more ambitious twelve-volume work entitled The History of Middle-earth, which encompasses nearly the entire corpus of his father's writings about Middle-earth.
The independent scholar Douglas C. Kane writes that Christopher Tolkien chose to include not just narrative tales, despite the book's title, but "a taste of some of the descriptive and historical underpinnings of those heretofore uncharted vistas", and that indeed he suggested he might "dive even deeper into the history of his father's legendarium", as he eventually did with his 12-volume The History of Middle-earth. The Tolkien scholar Corey Olsen notes that Christopher Tolkien chose to present the incomplete tales as they were, adding a commentary to help readers grasp how they fitted in to his father's Middle-earth legendarium. Olson comments that the book's commercial success demonstrated the existence of a market for more of Tolkien's writings, opening up a route to publication of The History of Middle-earth.
The Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft wrote in Christianity & Literature that many readers had felt disappointed by Unfinished Tales, as some had felt about The Silmarillion. Perry Bramlett adds that the book is not for the reader new to Tolkien, nor even one who has read only The Hobbit "or perhaps some or even all of the Lord of the Rings." He notes Christopher Tolkien's warning that the stories "constitute no whole" and that much of the content "will be found unrewarding" to those without a good knowledge of Lord of the Rings. More positively, he cites David Bratman's comment that much of it is as well-crafted as any of Tolkien's writings, and that readers who found The Silmarillion "a little too high and distant" would welcome it.
The science fiction author Warren Dunn, writing in 1993, described the book as engaging, and that every section contained "something of interest", but he cautioned that it required "an intimate knowledge" of The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and its appendices "for full enjoyment" of the book. He commented that "I really do wish we could have seen the whole history like this, even if it took up twelve volumes to get through the first, second and third ages before the Lord of the Rings!"
Frank P. Riga and colleagues, also in Mythlore, write that Peter Jackson used the Quest to enrich the story when transforming The Hobbit from novel to film for his 2013 film adaptation, . Among other things, the film opens with the meeting between Gandalf and Thorin at The Prancing Pony. Elements of Gandalf's motivations and previous discussions with Thorin also find their way into the 2012 film as dialogue, particularly in the meeting held in Bilbo's house. In their view, the Quest "closely and thoroughly connects the action of The Hobbit with the larger, cosmic concerns of its sequel, showing how the Dwarves' struggle to regain their homeland became crucial in frustrating Sauron's plan to attack Lorien and Rivendell." They explain that the quest had to succeed, or the actions described in The Lord of the Rings could not have occurred. Jackson used the connections, they state; for instance, making Saruman order Gandalf to stop the quest, and making Gandalf refuse, supported by Galadriel.
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