Bookdepository says my copy is on the way!
It will be interesting to see what actually arrives.

If it looks more or less like this, I'll be happy. The green they were looking at is quite a bit brighter than this, though, and my gut feel is the true colour is probably somewhere in between their colour and my colour. Not sure if they changed it or not. #ColoursAreHard

Interesting reference to Alice in Wonderland in the original DJ. Hard to imagine a time when Tolkien was unknown and his publisher used this sort of comparison.

Morinehtar wrote:
Interesting reference to Alice in Wonderland in the original DJ. Hard to imagine a time when Tolkien was unknown and his publisher used this sort of comparison.

79 Years is a long time! Note that "Dodgeson" has the "e" inked out with pen. There was a bit of discussion as to whether they would go without the pen correction, but (assuming nothing changed last minute, of course), the jacket will have the ink correction (it would have been very odd to have not had it, given all the 1937 copies were corrected in this way before leaving the printers).

Does that mean they will print the name with the correct spelling or reproduce the ink mark?

Morinehtar wrote:
Does that mean they will print the name with the correct spelling or reproduce the ink mark?

Will be as per the original jacket. The name will be misspelled and have the ink mark printed over the 'e'. Hand correcting after printing wasn't an economic option, for obvious reasons. They didn't ever intend to correct the spelling, the question was down to whether to print the ink mark or leave that to the customer to add themselves if they wanted to. Myself and Trotter's view was very much that the ink mark should be printed.

The question of what to correct is an interesting one. On the version I initially supplied to HC, I had left the right and left borders slightly off vertical (basically the whole thing should be slightly off square). It looks like they slightly corrected that misalignment on the left [albeit it is still off square], which is technically not correct, but probably does look better when printed). The number of people that know it should be slightly off square is quite small, but the number of people that would think it was printed wrongly (if done accurately) is quite high. I didn't feel strongly about it, and assuming that was the version they went with, I don't think it was a bad call.

At the end of the day, if you want something that is absolutely bibliographically correct, you need to buy an original (and spend an extra 20,000 pounds!).

DHL Parcel just arrived from HarperCollins - You saw it here first :)


The good news is that the facsimile first is good, and all my final jacket edits seem to have made it in. I didn't photo it, but the book does have the correct topstain.

It isn't printed by Clays, interestingly, but by Rotalito Lombarda, Italy. The pages are cream, and look good (the paper isn't anything special, but it isn't bright white or glossy or otherwise offensive).

[Edit: Oh, and the flaps are re-typeset by HC, rather than the cleaned up scanned ones.]

Nice! Thanks for all the pics. Will have to wait a bit for mine to arrive, I think...

Urulöké wrote:
Nice! Thanks for all the pics. Will have to wait a bit for mine to arrive, I think...

Yeah, I got the luxury DHL treatment, rather than the usual snail mail :)

I ordered with my copy from SpeedyHen who say the book isn't officially published until the 5th Oct. And yet in NZ someone has their mucky paws on a copy...

BH