Black UK LOTR paperbacks

I vaguely remember some Canadian/US printed copies that were shorter.

Yeah... so HarperCollins published these in Canada as well (they were printed in the U.S. but not released there). Nearly all of these HarperCollins Canadian 'editions' are slightly smaller than their U.K. counterparts, for whatever reason.

You can find some information about this and pictures of copyright pages, etc. here: www.tolkienbooks.us/ca/lotr/hc2001

That 2011 edition you linked to (number 4 in your list) is actually a different edition, not just a reprint, and is a larger size (b-format).

As an aside, I was recently wondering about the 2002 HoMe series. It seems this was re-issued in 2015, does anyone know why? Also, there are at least a few volumes in the series that were re-issued but erroneously state that they are 2002 first impressions (and they aren't Canadian); and these first impressions differ from the original 2002 firsts. I'd be curious if any completists out there (looking at you Remy) get into this knotty stuff.

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