[davem]

Originally Posted by Child

I appreciate your frustration, but I would disagree with one of your points. I don't believe these editorial changes are of such magnitude that we risk the danger of having "two" Lord of the Rings. I don't see a slew of minor changes in wording and punctuation amounting to the type of substantial revision you are alluding to. I'll admit that I could be proved wrong. If someone could show me a laundry list of changes that will truly affect the meaning of the story, then I will change my tune.

Its not so much that I think we'll end up with two (or more) competing editions of LotR. Its mainly frustration that we keep being 'sold' (literally & metaphorically) 'perfect' editions of LotR which subsequently turn out to be nothing of the kind. If the publishers were to put out an e-text with free updates that would be fine, but every time they or the editors mess up or decide they have a 'more accurate' version of the text they print it & charge us for it. Over here we have what's called the Trades Descriptions Act, which requires companies, manufacturers & suppliers of goods & services to do what they say & holds them legally accountable if they fail to do so. I think we've about reached a point with LotR where the publishers & editors stop trying to 'con' us & just honestly say 'In this edition we've tried to put right errors but not only may we not have put them right we may even have introduced some new ones. We've made changes to the text, which we think are correct, but we may be completely wrong.'

My hope is that the new 900 page 'LotR: A Readers Guide' which is out in a few weeks will detail all the typos & changes they are talking about.

Davem - You wouldn't by any chance have a touch of Elvish blood? I sense a reluctance to welcome any changes, even when such textual tinkering is at least paraded under the rubric that it is an attempt to return to the "original, true" text. (And could this not at least in certain cases actually be true?)

I do like 'everything set out fair & square, with no contradictions'. As to these editorial obsessings being an attempt to return to the '"original, true" text. (And could this not at least in certain cases actually be true?) - maybe they are & maybe they aren't. Personally, I'm lost as to whether there is such a thing, whether that's what they're really up to, or even whether this obsession with producing the 'definitive' LotR is entirely healthy.

All I do know for sure is that, as you state,

LotR HAS never and WILL never reach a final pristine form such (as it supposedly once took inside Tolkien's head) despite the tinkering that's gone on for over fifty years.

. So what's the point in this constant tinkering?

There is still a great deal of unpublished writing - The Fall of Arthur, The New Volsunga Saga, the translation of Beowulf, the other letters, the diaries - which may be of incredible importance to Tolkien Studies (the newly published Smith essay will lead us down some very interesting roads), yet all we seem to be getting are these tinkerings with established texts.

Edit. What I normally do is just grab the nearest copy of LotR - out of about a dozen or so editions - when I want to check anything, or I'm preparing for a CbC post. If I want to read it for pleasure I go to my 1976 paperbacks, which we're my original gateway to Middle-earth (they aren't the actual ones I bought back then, but the same edition boxed set Lalwende found for me on ebay). I think the first edition of LotR that you read is always going to be the 'definitive' LotR for you - whether it has typos, errors, even tears & creases - and that's something that is completely ignored by the 'tinkerers' - even if their hearts are in the right place.