J. R. R. Tolkien
The Fall of Númenor
Engraved after Gustave Doré
- 20 plates
- Gustave Doré
The book
An island kingdom given to men as a reward becomes, over three thousand years, a colonial empire terrified of death, and finally sails a fleet against the gods. The sea takes it. The survivors found the kingdoms that everything else happens in.
Why Gustave Doré
The Deluge. Doré's Bible plates include the definitive nineteenth-century drowning-world image — figures on a last rock with water rising and no horizon — and Númenor's end is that picture with a civilisation attached.
The rest of the book is imperial pageantry curdling, which his Crusades engravings already know how to draw.
What to look for
Ships. The cycle opens with them as exploration and closes with them as an armada, and the plates deliberately rhyme the two.
