The Children of Húrin

The book

A man defies a dark power and is made to sit and watch, unable to die, while everything he loves is destroyed by a curse. His son grows up under it, does his best, and every choice makes it worse. The bleakest thing Tolkien wrote, and the closest to Greek tragedy.

Why Gustave Doré

Doré's Dante again, but the lower circles rather than the descent. This is a book about people trapped in a mechanism they can see working on them, which is the exact subject of the Inferno plates.

It also wants an illustrator with no interest in consolation, and Doré, for all the Victorian piety around him, never softened a punishment.

What to look for

How little heroism is drawn. Túrin is usually alone, usually walking away from something, and the plates decline to make his violence admirable.

Plates

Húrin and Huor in GondolinHúrin Before MorgothTúrin Sent from Dor-lóminThe Death of SaerosBeleg Finds HimAmon RûdhThe Treachery of MîmThe Rescue in the StormThe Grief by the TreeThe Sack of NargothrondMorwen and Nienor Ride OutThe Maiden on the Mound