Well, I've just checked my order & it says:

Another case of Harper Collins underestimating demand??

You may be right, though it may be UK Amazon not locking down enough copies in advance? The smaller marketplace shops are making a point of saying that they can ship immediately.

Rateliff mentions in the interview:
Well, to me the mention of Beren & Luthien is hardly a 'pretty good indication' that TH was intended to be part of the Legendarium from the start. If we take a reference to B&L as 'evidence' of that, then we have to take similar references to 'Faerie in the West' as evidence that Roverandom was intended to take place in the same world as TH & LotR. Without LotR TH would have no connection to the Legendarium beyond a few shared names. All the reference to B&L indicates is that Tolkien made use of the Legendarium as it then existed to provide background for the story. And a more significant point is that Tolkien removed the reference.

I've got it. Only had chance for a quick flick through so far. Not impressed with the quality to be honest. It doesn't have sewn in signatures, but the pages are glued together like a paperback & stuck in a hard cover.

And, believe it or not, this 476 page book doesn't have an Index. The only reference I can find to Beren & Luthien so far is that they 'broke his (the Necromancer's) power'

Amazon you minx...
 

Mine arrived this morning but I only got as far as the intro before life got in the way.

The binding is disappointing becasue although teh cloth back will endure better than paper it does make a hb first ed relatively ephemeral ...

since this is effectively one work in 2 volumes I humbly suggest that as with LOTR the index will be in PT 2? Inconvenient in the interim I admit, but not unreasonable.

Well, maybe. It still means you'll need both volumes to hand to check what's in volume 1, so it'll be a bit inconvenient still. And it smacks laziness, or lack of care on the part of HC. All the volumes of HoM-e have separate indexes. And the quality of the binding is appalling for a book costing £20. This is a scholarly work & many copies will end up in Libraries & get a lot of use. I can see a lot of them ending up broken in half down the spine. This sort of book needs to open flat.

Actually, this is the kind of thing that needs to be released on CD rom (as does HoM-e) but that's another discussion.

Anyway, I've just had an email from Amazon informing me that delivery on the 70th anniversary edition of The Hobbit has been put back to July.

The binding is annoying .... I am planning to take up book binding (still at the reading stage) partly becasue I have many old and indeed ancient volumes that need recovering and DIY is the economic option. Even very old volumes can be rebound relatively easily if they are sewn but this somewhat ironically named "perfect binding" cannot be so restored. Disappointing but alas in general hardbacks are a produced at a loss and so they cut corners. SinceI only paid £12 - barely more than a full price paperback, I am not too bothered. It was n impulse buy when I ordered Hurin and I don't know I would have got it if it had been a lot more ... maybe waited for the PB ..... but I think I shall enjoy it..

I wonder when (or if) there will be a paperback. There may not be. Thing is, those who want this book would have paid an extra few quid to get it with a decent binding, & I'm not sure its the kind of thing that even fans of Tolkien will buy on impulse at £20 a copy. £40 is a lot of money for a study of TH. Can't help wondering whether HC were really all that bothered about publishing it at all. Not seen much in the way of promotion. Mind you, they've got new Tolkien stuff every month for most of this year -
next month History of TH vol 2,
July 70th anniversary h/b of TH, Children of Hurin calendar & diary,
August a hardback of Tolkien's Fairy stories (Roverandom, Smith, Niggle, AoTB),
September the CoH audiobook, &
October the revised edition of OFS & a new ed of Mr Bliss.

& maybe they've blown their Tolkien promo budget on CoH...

maybe ..but I am sure that there were plenty like me who might not have rushed out to buy it but happily whacked it on to the CoH order as a linked deal...

Full of interesting little gems - like the fact that the original name of Golfimbul the Orc beheaded by Bullroarer in the act that originated the game of golf, was originally named Fingolfin! Clearly Tolkien wanted a name that included the 'golf' element in order to make the joke work, but this (as Rateliff points out) is an odd choice of name for a goblin.

Rateliff makes a decent case for TH being set in the world of the Sil right from the start - the reference to Beren & Luthien, the similarity between the painting of Mirkwood Tolkien made for TH & the painting of Beleg & Gwindor in Taur nu Fuin being virtually identical, etc, & accounts for the repeated references to the primary world (the Hindu kush, China, Shetland ponies) as being down to the fact that the Legendarium always, right from the BoLT period was a mythic history of our world. I'm not convinced. Roverandom is the problem for Rateliff's theory. Unless one is willing to argue that Roverandom, with its references to Faerie in the West is also set in the world of the Sil, & hence part of the Legendarium as well, its difficult to justify including TH in there - at least not from its origin.

Clearly Tolkien wanted it to be a part after the success of LotR - which is why in Vol 2 we can look forward to two chapters of TH re-written in the style of LotR.

I came back from the German Tolkien Seminar with a very interesting new publication by a small, specialized Swiss publishing company - Walking Tree Publishers. It's titled Roots and Branches, and is a collection of essays by Tom Shippey!! Many were published in obscure and hard-to-get publications, a number were given as speeches. I was excited to be able to read his paper on proverbiality in Tolkien from Birmingham 2005, since I wasn't able to attend his lecture then, and I'm looking forward to the rest as well.

I also bought Inside Language by Ross Smith - on linguistic and aesthetic theory in Tolkien. I have only peeked inside, so can't say anything about it yet. (Both above books are brand new, so not yet listed on the website, but it is possible for North American and British readers to order them, as they are printed on demand there as well as in continental Europe.)

Then I also brought the second volume of Tolkien and Modernity, which looks interesting, though I didn't buy it for that reason - I translated one paper in it from German into English! (A hard bit of work, if I may say so - academic German is rather difficult to translate!) Obviously, I did want to preserve a publication to which I contributed to show my grandchildren someday... :Merisu:

Now I haven't been on this thread ina while and I was going to recommend the collection of Tom Shippey essays only to find Esty has been more on the ball ;)

Still, you guys can have the Amazon link if you likes: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roots-Branch...3715062&sr=1-1

I bought it for davem back in June but we have such a huge stack of reading to do it has not been read yet - however a fellow TS member on me F List (a blogging thing) was the first person I saw recommend it and he reckons it's good, so if Esty does too...

Esty, I thought you were at the Shippey talk on proverbs??? Was that when you had to go and rehearse? Is the Tolkien & Modernity one worth having as I've got a growing interest in this idea.

Anyway, another new one that I can recommend (and davem bought this one for me :D), especially to all my fellow plantswomen is The Plants of Middle-earth: Botany and Sub-creation by Dinah Hazell. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plants-Middl...3715062&sr=1-1. Not only is this interesting but it's rather nice looking too, and all us gardeners like to look at nice pictures of plants!

Was going to link to this elsewhere, but

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...476136-6725516

Looks interesting, but I don't have it as yet. Not a Tolkien book as such, but Tolkien is referenced in the final chapter (check out the 'Look Inside' option) as being inspired by Norse literature.

Probably for Fans of Norse literature & Tolkien completists...

Hobbit 70th Anniversary Edition http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...er_Collins.php

& the CoH audio book will be available as a download http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...ugust_2007.php
(Could we hope that the illustrations are included as jpeg's? on the cd's?)

Harper Collins are rubbish..... or...
 

I've just got an email from Amazon about the 70th Anniversary Hobbit. They estimate that rather than delivery being today or tomorrow, it will be next February! Now, the boxed set, including Rateliff's History of TH as well as the 70th anniversary edition, is supposed to be out this month - & if its the case that TH will only be available separately next February something is definitely wrong - those of us who got the HoTH volumes as they appeared are being penalised. Of course, Amazon could be wrong - that said, this edition of TH has been promised for the last six months & has been constantly put back by the publishers.

Further bad news is that the CoH audio book, promised by Harper Collins for publication three days ago (3rd Sept), is now due out on November 5th, & the h/b Tales from the Perilous Realm (including Roverandom, Giles, Smith, Niggle & AoTB) has been promised from August 6th & still not appeared.

End rant......

Pretty, pretty thing...
 

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...xe_edition.php

Anyway....an update on my rant.

Recieved an email from Amazon that TH has dispatched. Don't know who's mistake it was to send the 'Feb. delivery notification - misinfo from H-C or Amazon getting their dates wrong - I'd lean towards it being H-C. Tales from the Perilous Realm is now listed as being published Sept 1st 2008.

More on the new Hobbit
 

Well, I've just got The Hobbit 70th anniversary edition. Nice matte cover. Its the cheaper 'perfect' binding, rather than the sewn in signatures of the recent LotR, Sil & UT editions, but it does include the 'Mirkwood' illustration. Sadly, the fold out Thror's Map included in the deluxe edition, with the Moon Runes printed in reverse on the back so that they show through when held up to the light (as Tolkien intended) is not included. Certainly worth adding to your collection for all that.

My Houghton Mifflin 70th Anniversary Hobbit arrived today. Davem -- I assume you purchased the Harper Collins edition? Mine sounds similar to yours. After all these recent "glitzy" collector's edition, this one is more like a little grey mouse. Very comfortable to read. I rather like it, especially the muted tones of the cover that remind me a little of the Harper Collins History of the Hobbit. Does yours have the first chapter of LotR tucked into the back and the short foreward by Christopher dated 1987?

I think that, as with CoH, both HM & HC have gone for the same design & contents. Of course, including the Long Expected Party chapter in there opens up the whole can of worms about whether TH is part of the Legendarium proper.....:p

No, it doesn't because

1. The Silm as a satisfactorily completed book was just a gleam in JRRT's and CT's eyes when TH and LotR were published, so the original inclusion of LEP had nothing to do with any kind of statement about the Legendarium.

2. Inclusion of LEP was related to the fact that Tolkien started LotR as a sequel to TH. Even if LotR grew beyond that intention, the original intention is not negated.

3. Inclusion of such chapters as LEP was a publishing strategy related to marketing. It was designed to inspire readers to buy more books (and maybe even pad a smallish book to make it seem more substantial). It was not designed to make a statement about any kind of authorial universe, about which readers at the time knew nothing.

4. Removing LEP from an edition of TH which is not represented as an exact reprinting of the original first edition and which includes several other items would represent a revision to the history of publication of TH. It happened. Discussing it of course is legitimate--many people do enjoy the wriggling aspect of argument--but to erase it is the worst sort of historical revisionism.

Well, one could argue that the mythology was fully formed (certainly in Tolkien's mind) when Tolkien began TH, & despite Rateliff's arguments to the contrary TH was not written with anything but a very indirect relation to the Legendarium - yes, the early drafts contain references to Beren & Luthien, along with Gondolin & such, but they also contain references to China, the Hindu Kush & Shetland ponies.

It could be argued that by the time The New Hobbit became LotR it had ceased to be a sequel to TH & become the final movement of the Silmarillion. Tolkien clearly stated that he 'did not approve of The Hobbit' preferring instead his own mythology. Of course, once LotR did become part of the Sil proper he was stuck with TH - which is neither part of the mythology proper (in CT's opinion - which is the main reason TH is not included in HoM-e). I think this is confirmed by the fact that he struggled & failed to make it (or a version/retelling of it) fit the mood & style of the Legendarium. Flieger doesn't count it as part of the Legendarium either, & dislikes it intensely (which I don't - its one of my favourite books)

That I accept - a clear marketing strategy. Of course, most recent pb editions of TH have included LEP. Personally, I find it leaves TH feeling 'unfinished'. Rather than a complete tale in its own right, with a beginning, middle & end it is reduced to a prequel to LotR.

I don't see how it constitues 'revisionism' at all. Tolkien never authorised LEP to be included in TH, & it seems to me to be simply an extended advert for LotR.

I think the bottom line is Th wasn't written as a sequel to or continuation of the mythology as it existed at the time of writing, once the New Hobbit had become part of The Sil mythology Tolkien was stuck with TH & repeatedly tried & failed to properly integrate it & in the end gave up. TH should be seen as a stand alone tale, not as the precursor to something greater. If readers want to see it as a part of the Legendarium proper they are free to do so - Rateliff provides enough 'evidence' to convince those who want to be convinced (against the clear statements of both Tolkien pere & fils) but adding LEP is an attempt to tie TH directly into LotR & thus to The Sil mythology, when there is a strong (some of us would say convincing) argument to be made that it it not.

EDIT more from Rateliff on this here http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2007/09...-seen-two.html

Thank you, davem, for rehearsing the argument about TH's status in the Legendarium. I'm sure there would be one or two Downers at least who are reading this thread who might not previously have been acquainted with the argument.

But to focus on the new Tolkien books aspect of this topic, I doubt that any of us have access to Tolkien's mind at the time he wrote TH or recited it to his children (or at any other time for that matter), so it's a bit dodgy saying what existed in his mind. Millions of marriages might be headed for the rocks if we could read minds so easily--or possibly be salvaged--especially after the fact.

And I'm ever so intrigued by that announcement in the 1937Allen and Unwin catalogue. I wonder who wrote it?

Here's the link you provided on Esty's TH birthday thread: Announcement of TH

Don't mention it. That's what i'm here for.

i think I quite fairly presented the evidence & offered up CT & Flieger as proponents of the TH is not part of the Legendarium argument & Rateliff as part of the oh yes it is lobby. Lot's of us have attempted to guess what was in his mind at various times, what his motives were, or why he even bothered at all, when he could just have got seriously drunk & found a nice comfortable gutter to lie down in.

Possibly Tolkien himself - sounds like his phraseology. Of course 'age of faerie' could mean 'world of the Legendarium' (Fairies at that time still being a name for Elves) - which is what Rateliff would argue, or it could just mean 'age of fairytale' where Elves & fairies rode Shetland ponies over the Hindu Kush...

A new edition of CoH - for the collectors (& older Downers) the large print edition

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...bookdeposi-21/

Oh, & Amazon.ca state that the paperback CoH is published April 7th 2008 - doesn't mention if the paintings are included.
http://www.amazon.ca/Children-Hurin-...0834773&sr=8-4

I'm not sure if it is new, but has anyone read "Children of Hurin"? I just recently bought it because I've never seen it before. It has alot of the same stuff that is in the Sil and Unfinished tales, but there is a bunch of new stuff added. If it is new I can surely find out what was newly added and share what I've found.

New Paperback LotR 7th April 2008
 

A three volume set with the Alan Lee Illustrations:

So, looks like the CoH paperback is published on the same date.

This one also looks interesting - if a little expensive: Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...heologians.php

Pics of the new LotR & Hobbit paperbacks
 

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...y_Alan_Lee.php

Designed to match the CoH paperback http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...per_Deluxe.php

All released next April.

This one here seems to be very interesting: The Silmarillion: 30 years on
http://www.walking-tree.org/cormareB....php?number=15

Here are some more pieces information about the content or the authors of the essays, respectively. Sadly it is on German, but maybe Google will help.... ;)
http://www.tolkien-buecher.de/news.php?id=61

Any questions on Walking Tree Publications (the link provided by A_Brandybuck above) can be sent to me - I have my fingers in several pies there, and will be happy to translate information for those interested. The books themselves are in English and are well worth reading.

More on this book from the Tolkien Library site:
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...y_Years_On.php

Also, the Tolkien Society are offering 2 recordings on CD of Tolkien related talks:

1st is Facets of Tolkien: Priscilla Tolkien from 1977 on The Silmarillion, Humphrey Carpenter from the same year on The Silmarillion, & Raynor Unwin in 1980 on Unfinished Tales.

2nd is Tolkien & the Inklings: Humphrey Carpenter in 1978 on his book The Inklings, Tom Shippey in 1982 on The Righteous Pagan in Tolkien, & Barbara Strachey in 1981 on Journeys of Frodo.

Available from Tolkien Society Trading Ltd, 8 Chantry Lane, Westbury, Wiltshire, BA 13 3BS, UK for £15.99 (£17.50 for European orders, £17.99 rest of the world) each or £28.00 (£29.75 Eur./£32 RoW) for both.

More on the edition of 'Tales from the Perilous Realm' due out Sept/Oct from Harper Collins.

It will be available in standard H/B & de-Luxe (same format as the CoH de-Luxe).

Tom Shippey intro, Alan Lee illustrations & Afterword, & OFS included..... have to say that a Hobbit movie pales into insignificance.......

Sounds nice; enticing, with Lee's illustrations, though a hardback is a rather expensive addition for those of us who already have all of those works. I can suggest a perfect companion:

http://www.walking-tree.org/covers/cc17_140.jpg

More information here. (Cover illustration by Anke Eissmann)

Cover pic for Tales from the Perilous Realm..
 

The proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 conference are due to made available around the time of Oxonmoot. The editors (all just TS members) have been working hard on them for nowt but the fun of it.

Should cost about £35, which is expensive but I've Gotta Have It, because there was loads of good stuff I missed (it was just impossible to go to everything), loads of stuff I did not miss but I'd like to read the papers from - and most importantly because the proceedings of the Centenary Conference is (are?) one of my fave Tolkien books and these are impossible to obtain now. That was full of random but inspired stuff and this should be the same. :cool:

That's great news, Lal! I will definitely buy it as well, to freshen up some topics and to be able to read those which I wasn't able to hear. I hope it will be available at Oxonmoot, as I could then purchase it without mailing costs.

In the last issue of Amon Hen it said they should be available to collect at Oxonmoot - I would imagine putting an order in to TS Trading (you can get to it via the TS website) would reserve you a copy. However they did specifically warn that they are incredibly heavy and I understand it comes in two volumes, so it might end up costing you a lot in extra baggage on a flight! :eek:

EDIT - checked Amon Hen and you can order via TS Trading. UK price - £35; Europe and World Surface price - £50; World Air price - £66. If you mark the order "Oxonmoot collection" and it is available at that time, you will be refunded the postage.

Also, Tolkien Studies 5 will be out soon (price £26.99) - though if I had to choose between that and the 2005 papers, I'd pick the papers because Tolkien Studies can be a bit dry ;)

Bob Blackham also has a book coming out titled Tolkien's Oxford - this should be good as his book on Birmingham was ace. And he's a nice bloke too, always good to see royalties going to a nice bloke :)

Whoa! Check out the contents of the Proceedings of Tolkien 2005:

http://www.tolkiensociety.org/2005/p...ngs/index.html

Stellar cast list plus a paper on just about everything. That should keep any reader going for a few months. :eek: This is a must-have book for me.

Esty gets a virtual drink if she can spot the obvious omission. I wonder why that has been left out?

Whoa, that looks all too interesting - too promising from what I see, though, I am kind of afraid that I won't have the chance to obtain it :(