[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Nobody, least of all me, gave a satisfactory answer to this. In fact I was completely misleading, so as penance I'm resurrecting the thread to invite some more informed responses.

I seem to remember that recent HarperCollins editions of LotR have included a note on the text that describes the various editions and their accuracy, but I don't have the book with me and I can't remember it off-hand. I've never read an American edition in its entirety, so perhaps someone else can give some details on their relative respectability, but in the meantime the following information is at least passably reliable.

The official U.K. publishers of Tolkien's work are HarperCollins, who have been so ever since they absorbed his original publishers, George Allen and Unwin.

Houghton Mifflin printed the first American editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and are the American publisher most mentioned in the published letters.

Ballantine are also an authorised and official publisher of Tolkien, who printed a range of paperbacks after the Ace Books incident.

I don't doubt that someone will be able to add a lot of detail to those details as well. This is more of an extended bump than a real post.