MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Tolkien and the Silmarils is a short study by Randel Helms, professor of English at Arizona State University and author of the earlier Tolkien's World. Published in 1981 by Houghton Mifflin in Boston and Thames and Hudson in London, it was one of the first books written after The Silmarillion appeared in 1977.
Helms looks at how the stories of the Elder Days grew over Tolkien's life, how they connect with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and which older traditions they echo. He gives particular weight to the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, as a model for the shape of Tolkien's mythology.
An early study of The Silmarillion, its growth and its sources, written a few years after the book was first published.