Once upon a time, a scribe wrote the word 'earendel' into an Anglo-Saxon text. The young J.R.R. Tolkien later encountered this word. He thought it beautiful and unusual. His discovery launched him on a lifelong voyage through a world of dazzling imagination, and the word became the key source for his Legendarium and for Middle-earth. My book examines the history and many variants of this mysterious word, and specifically TolkienÕs initial quest for it during the 1913-15 period, with detailed reference to the wider state of knowledge at that time.