A while back I posted this thread... https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienbooks/comments/1w5gwrh/some_things_just_gnaw_away_at_you/
Turned out my Silmarillion was not the first version that had the copper lettering on the dust jacket. So what do you do?... buy another book.
It's a standard sized ladybird, similar size and shape to a seven spot. Central West Wales, UK.
Spot the difference
Technically there is one more book to get, which is The End of the Third Age. That has the first few chapters of Sauron Defeated to complete a History of The Lord of the Rings box set. And every time I gamble on a copy on eBay, I get a different edition (generally the 1998 box set version).
These are the current (non-limited edition) slip cased, UK "deluxe" editions, as far as I'm aware. I'd appreciate any pointers for editions I'm missing.
I have no real reason to own these, but clearly at some point I thought I should.
I'm looking for something like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FWQLGY7N?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1 but shorter to double up my hardback books.
I already use the Sunuco ones for my paperbacks, but need something that's only 90 mm high for the hardbacks. Is there something available off the shelf?
This may be a blast from the past for some... Iron Crown Enterprises' Middle Earth Roleplaying game. This was a fantastic (if mostly non-canon) way for young Tolkien fans to get their fix of Middle Earth material in the 1980s, going into the 1990s.
The Tolkien Estate didn't approve of roleplaying games based on Middle Earth, as the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons found out when they were legally challenged and had to remove Hobbits and Ents (renamed Halflings and "Treants"). Iron Crown Enterprises bypassed this by licensing it from Saul Zaentz's Tolkien Enterprises.
The picture shows some of the game's adventure and campaign modules. Sadly these are quite collectible and expensive these days. So I don't have all of them!
A game, fun or otherwise, for you all... Identify which edition of The Hobbit this is.
I thought I'd start this thread to showcase some collection focuses (foci?) that people new to collecting can achieve without breaking the bank. This is a set of books from the late-1970s that are mostly coherent in style that I really enjoy. I think it's complete, but would be delighted to find out I have another book to buy.
They're Unwin paperbacks.
I've collected these over a few years and spent maybe £30 in total on them.
These have been shipping since Saturday, but got mine today. I really like the covers... new ones for Kullervo and Aotrou and Itroun.
The books are really skinny in comparison to the previous editions of Kullervo, Aotrou and Itroun and Maldon.
I've been re-reading The Book of Lost Tales, which is one of my favourite pieces of Tolkien's work. I really enjoy when Tolkien uses words that have fallen into disuse...
One that I quite enjoyed is the word "clomb". It's the past participle of "climb".
>[...] and white streets there were bordered with dark trees that wound with graceful turns or climbed with flights of delicate stairs up from the plain of Valinor to topmost Kôr; and all those shining houses clomb each shoulder higher than the others till the house of Inwë was reached that was the uppermost, [...].
We'd obviously use "climbed" these days, but we still "strive" where we once "strove", and "write" where we once "wrote".
The only other place I've seen the word "clomb" is in Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels from 1914*.*
>The beautiful Seraph, pointing with glittering hand, mounting ever higher and higher, showed us the way. All day long we slowly clomb the lofty heights which at evening were robed in azure, rose, and violet.
And, a bit older, Spenser's Faerie queene, published in 1590 and criticised at the time for its deliberate use of archaic language!
>Who when these two approaching he aspide,
At their first presence grew agrieved sore,
That forst him lay his heavenly thoughts aside;
And had he not that Dame respected more,
Whom highly he did reverence and adore,
He would not once have moved for the knight.
They him saluted, standing far afore;
Who well them greeting, humbly did requight,
And asked, to what end they clomb that tedious height.
