Which Version Do You Own?

[Extollager]

Mushrooming your book was a hobbitty thing to do

 

[paranoid marvin]

Extollager - I love the art on those covers!

 

[tinkerdan]

I have a hardback edition.
Houghton Mifflin second edition 1966(US)
Three books
They came with plastic protector over the dustcover and each one has a fold out map attached to the last page.
They are price marked at 6.00 US dollars a piece; however I got them on sale, though I don't remember how much I paid.
It's a rather simple edition except for the map.

I also have the hardback Hobbit
Houghton Mifflin twenty-fifth edition 1966
priced at 3.95 US

 

[Extollager]

Tinkerdan, that'd be this attractive set, right?

That's what those books often looked like in American public libraries. By the time I came to buy LotR in hardcover for myself, it was the previously-mentioned one-volume edition in red faux leather that I bought.

 

[tinkerdan]

Those are the ones...

Tinkerdan, that'd be this attractive set, right?

I didn't get the box; bur have the plastic over the dustcovers.
The hard back itself has a gold ring above a colorful circle with script all around the circle and a gold eye in the middle.

 

[Extollager]

Tinkerdan, those books were, I think, made late in the period in which major publishers, as a matter of course, bound books in full cloth and the pages were in sewn signatures. At least it seems to me that it was in the 1970s that one saw the end of full cloth bindings for most fiction books and the institution of glued bindings -- the pages glued to the spine of the book. It's interesting to handle books such as the LotR edition you picture and to realize that that's just the way novels, etc. were made 50 years and more ago. They feel and look quite different from what we get now.

 

[CupofJoe]

This isn't about the physical books [I have a 70s Hardback and an 80s paperback sets]. but to do with the BBC Radio dramatisation.
I bought it on cassette as soon as it became available and then on CD when I could afford it, but I've just discover a new version after all these years.
The audio dramas have been reedited in to the three volumes [Fellowship, Towers and Return] rather than the 12 CDs. There is an audio introduction and conclusion by Frodo setting the scene. It binds the story together in a rather new way for me.
It is available from the Internet Archive if nowhere else.

 

[Matteo]

These:

They sit next to the Tower of Orthanc..

 

[Bick]

My Tolkien book collection (all HB books from Harper Collins):

Hmm, matching hardbacks...
I've been thinking of adding to the collection. What would be the next one or two cabs off the rank, vis-a-vis additional Tolkien books?

 

[HareBrain]

What would be the next one or two cabs off the rank, vis-a-vis additional Tolkien books?

Farmer Giles of Ham?

There's also a volume called Poems and Stories which collects all Tolkien's short works such as Farmer Giles, Tree and Leaf, Smith of Wooton Major, etc.

 

[Pyan]

There's a lot of what might be described an ancillary books as well - Lost Tales 1 & 2, and Unfinished Tales have some interesting stories in them that are expansions of things just touched on in the main sequence.

 

[HareBrain]

and Unfinished Tales

That's in his picture, Py. (I didn't see it at once either.)

 

[Pyan]

So it is. Never mind, aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus.
Thanks, HB.

 

[Extollager]

Bick, you might consider the 9th volume, Sauron Defeated, of The History of Middle-earth. This contains a work of about 150 pages called The Notion Club Papers, which some people find rather fascinating. It begins in what was for Tolkien the near-future (1984, as I recall), with notes of meetings of an Inklings-like group, and becomes gradually more serious, eventually building to a catastrophe that, for me at least, recalls Lovecraft, before the work was set aside and Tolkien returned to the writing of The Lord of the Rings in the mid-1940s. But I wouldn't want to be without Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, and Smith of Wootton Major.

 

[dask]

This boxed set Extollager posted is the one I have:

 

[AE35Unit]

I have this paperback set in cardboard slip case, plus a book of appendices which I didn't read yet.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

I can't remember which versions I have, other than 'several.' Sadly, most aren't in the best of condition as I picked them up at library book sales.

I've been thinking of adding to the collection. What would be the next one or two cabs off the rank, vis-a-vis additional Tolkien books?

There's also the The Road Goes Ever On, the book of sheet music that Tolkien wrote with composer Donald Swan. I have a first edition of it that my brother and sister gave me as a high school graduation gift. Another good ancillary book is Lost Road and Other Writings. I especially love the etymology section at the back with all the Elvish roots. Nearly worn that part out in my copy.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Re-reading this thread, why do I feel the need to go and buy this book again, even though I already own a copy? If I had the space (and the money) I could quite happily have a bookcase full of all the different versions.

 

[Extollager]

Here's a forthcoming edition (or two) that will be attractive to many:

The Lord of the Rings: Amazon.co.uk: Tolkien, J. R. R.: 9780008471293: Books
TCG - New One Volume LOTR Special Edtion (tolkienguide.com)

I'm not sure whether there is a "trade edition:" and a different "deluxe edition" or there's just one edition.