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.
