New Tolkien Books:updates

[davem]

Originally Posted by Child

Let's just hope publication isn't delayed beyond September.

Well, Amazon UK on the link gives publication as May 8th next year. Of course, that could be wrong, but as next year is the 70th anniversary of the publication of TH I suspect its likely. The only edition I'm aware of is the one in the link, published by Harper Collins here in the UK. Don't know if its being published in the US, so anyone outside the UK may have to get it on import. I don't think Houghton Mifflin have published a US edition of the recent SoWM edited by Flieger either.

As far as I'm aware the only thing CT has written specifically on the development of TH is the Introductory essay he wrote for this recent edition of TH: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...420348-4703108
(16 pages long with colour plates of manuscript pages - also including a fold-out Thror's map with the moon-runes printed in reverse on the back as Tolkien wished, so that when the map in held up to the light they show through- like magic!).

EDIT found this:

In a paper by John Rateliff, given in October 2004 and published about
a month ago, it is also stated the forthcoming publishing of The
History of the Hobbit. John Rateliff even cites a section or chapter
by name:

"It can hardly be coincidence that as late as 1940, when writing the
opening chapter of The Hobbit, Tolkien felt free to include not only
references to Beren,... [more of his mythology]... but also to the Gobi
Desert, Hindu Kush, and "the Wild were-Worms of the Chinese" as past of
Bilbo's world. (40)

40. See Rateliff, "The Pryftan Fragment", in _The History of The
Hobbit_, forthcomming."

And in bibliography it appears as:

Rateliff, John D. The history of the Hobbit. London: Harper Collins,
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, forthcoming.

here

Of course, as one of the posters points out first chapter of TH was written long before 1940, so probably a typo (for 1930??). However the 'Wild Were-Worms in the Last Desert' do appear in the published TH.