Being a fanatical
Silmarillion buyer & collector, I look at quite a lot of
Silmarillion auctions/sales in (far too much?) detail; & I see these types of auctions quite regularly:
eBay Item #261595633809Description:
The Silmarillion By J.R.R. Tolkien FirstEdition published by George Allen and Unwin 1977. RARE EXPORT COPY. Reckoned to be the True First Edition. There is no price on the inner flap and the wrapper has not been clipped. The book has been printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and Sons which is earlier than the Billings print. The Wrapper is in superb condition as it has been protected by a plastic wrapper. There is a tiny nick at the top of the spine and a minor crease. The cover is very clean with just slight browning on the top edge. I hope the photos do it justice a SUPERB wrapper. The book is even better. The pages are pure white with no hint of browning. The only fault I can find with it is a small bump on 2 corners. A First Issue copy authenticated by ERRORS Map is facing p121 ‘period‘ is missing p330 line 4 ‘Lord of Waters‘ and ‘King of the sea‘ in italics 7 lines from bottom of p.352. Now hard to find as most of them seem to have ended up in Canada. I am happy to take an OFFER
Looking past the inflated price (& the unmentioned faded/yellowing "Silmarillion" lettering on the spine), there are a few things which annoy me about this type of description. The seller states that this copy is "reckoned" to be the "True First Edition" i.e. the seller isn't willing to state categorically that this is, but is willing to use the term, to promote the item they're selling, nonetheless. In the context of the publication of
The Silmarillion the term "true", if one chooses to use the term (I wouldn't), should be reserved for a copy which, at the very least, carries two features.
Firstly, it should have an unpriced dustjacket i.e. it should fit the description of a book
not priced for the UK domestic market (ignoring the Book Club market for the moment; see later) in 1977. And secondly, it should retain both the
Feanor and
Ulmo errors (as cited by Hammond). This seller either misunderstands the nature of the
Ulmo error; or deliberately (& not carefully enough, if one understands the error) misconstrues the error, by omitting the word "and" from the description of what appears in italics. For those unfamiliar with this, the "and" should also be in italics in order to qualify this copy as containing both these errors (that appeared in early impressions). If this copy has "
Lord of Waters and King of the Sea" (bold is my emphasis) --then the
Ulmo error has been corrected in this copy. And, therefore, this copy does not have the (assumed priority; see Hammond) earliest text with, amongst others, these two errors. Therefore... this is not a "true" first edition, if this word means much to you to begin with.
I'm also intrigued by the map positioning issue point cited. For a start, describing the map positioning in terms of "error" is problematic; as the situation is more complicated than this. But moving beyond this, I'm curious as to the source of this. In 2007 Neil Holford (
Deagol) contacted me in regard to the positioning of the maps in the first edition of
The Silmarillion; something I've probably mentioned on TCG before. We discussed this at length, & after examining various impressions Neil amended (or added detail to) some of the
Silmarillion entries on
Tolkienbooks.net; mainly to include detail about the differences between the map positioning between the first impressions printed by
Billing and
Clowes.
While making it clear that my own role in this "discovery" (since Neil contacted
me initially & had clearly noticed that there were differences in the positioning of the map) was minimal (I merely examined the copies I had), I'd still like to ask whether anyone recalls whether sellers (& to a lesser extent collectors) cited map positioning, as an issue point, before Neil mentioned it? I've mentioned this before on this forum, but I genuinely do not recall anyone mentioning it prior to Neil documenting it on
Tolkienbooks.net. It's now widely cited; but rarely is it acknowledged where sellers are deriving this information from; or, to be frank, whether they understand what this means, in terms of priority. I say this because Neil & myself discussed this at
some length (very little of the minutiae, of what we discussed, appears on
Tolkienbooks.net) & it's annoying that sellers use information to support sales, when they do not understand it. It has become another throwaway listing blurb for sellers in order to inflate the importance of the ordinary item they are trying to sell. That I played a small role in the dissemination of this information is, of course, why I have a personal interest in this particular
Silmarillion issue point. However, I just wish they would cite/acknowledge
Tolkienbooks.net as their source; unless, that is, they've derived this information from somewhere else. For a start, it absolves them of some of the responsibility for the claims they are making in their listings; something, you'd think, that some sellers would want.
And (going back to this listing specifically) although this is, again, far more complicated than what I'm about to state; the
lack of dyed top page edges, combined with the fact that the boards look
paper-covered (& not cloth-covered) & that this copy lacks headbands -- all suggest (assuming the
Ulmo error is indeed corrected, & not present; as suggested by the listing) should make potential buyers doubt that this copy is a "true" first edition. It looks like a
Clowes second state copy; more aligned to the
Clowes BCA edition, than the Canadian-bound (destined for, that is) unpriced first state "export" edition. Again, if this matters
at all to collectors/buyers.
Of course, I may be wrong...
BH
10
1986