Story highlights The early Tolkien work is said to be an inspiration for Middle-earth

"The Story of Kullervo" was published in a journal in 2010

(CNN) An unfinished manuscript that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth will be published in late August in the United Kingdom and late October in the United States, according to reports.

Tolkien, whose beloved books were turned into the multibillion-dollar "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" movie trilogies, was a student of English at Oxford University's Exeter College in 1914 when he started writing "The Story of Kullervo."

Tolkien's book will be published on August 27 in the UK.

Tolkien based "The Story of Kullervo" on a character in the Finnish poem "The Kalevala." In the poem, the tragic Kullervo's story includes "the death of his tribe and subsequent time as a slave before seeking redemption by killing those responsible for his tribe's slaughter and, ultimately, committing suicide," according to the Hollywood Reporter . Kullervo also accidentally seduces his sister, which leads her to commit suicide.

In Tolkien's story, Kullervo is raised by the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father and kidnapped his mother, and who tries to kill him three times during Kullervo's childhood.

Tolkien said the unfinished manuscript was "the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own" and was "a major matter in the legends of the First Age," according to Tolkien's publisher, HarperCollins

Read More