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By going over the original lay of 1917, to the evolutions that the story went through in it's poem form, until the story we have gotten to know from the above book and the changes it underwent along the way.
The Tale of Beren and Luthien was, or became, an essential element in the evolution of the Silmarillion, the myths and legends of the First Age of the world conceived by Tolkien. Returning from France and the Battle of the Somme in 1916, he wrote the tale in the following year.
Essential to the story, and never changed, is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Luthien, for Beren was a mortal man, but Luthien was an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him the impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Luthien. This is the kernel of the legend; and it leads to the supremely heroic atte;pt of Beren and Luthien together to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril.
In this book Christopher Tolkien has atte;pted to extract the story of Beren and Luthien from the comprehensive works in which it was embedded; but that story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history. To show something of the process whereby this "Great tale" of Middle-Earth evolved over the years, he has told the stroy in his father's own words by giving first, it's original form, and then passages in prose and verse from latter texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed. Presented together for the first time, they reveal the aspects of the story, both in event and narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.
The book is a great read, and the changes to the story are immense at times. From the evolution of a "cat lord" into a werewolf necromancer, into Sauron... it is an intresting study of the changes to the legend.
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