The first-ever publication of a previously unknown short satirical fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and accompanied by illustrations from the author together with an essay, The Origin of Bovadium, by Richard Ovenden OBE. As scholars pore over fragments unearthed from the archaeological site at Bovadium, a handful of documents written in two languages reveal the secrets of this ancient place, which have lain buried for centuries. Evidently once upon a time a Daemon arose in nearby Vaccipratum, who by his cunning devised abominable machines which he called Motores. The people of Bovadium first became enamoured of these machines, but soon became their slaves;and as the roads were gridlocked and the city polluted by their fumes, the end of Bovadium was nigh. As Christopher Tolkien notes in his Introduction, The Bovadium Fragments was a ‘satirical fantasy’ written by his father, which grew out of a planning controversy that erupted in Oxford in the late 194