onthetrail wrote:
I am so excited to read this new collection. If you have any influence over the look of the book Carl, please, please insist that it has a black spine paperback as well as any hardcover.

I think it safe to say that authors have little to no input (or knowledge!) of what book covers are going to look like.

Good feedback though - hopefully HarperCollins takes note.

Carl, you probably can't answer this, but I'll ask away anyway...

How much input did Christopher actually have in terms of framing or shaping the early stages of this work?

I think I can answer this, since as the Frankfurt Book Fair announcement accurately relates, he sent me (the bulk of) the material that forms this book, in photocopy. Aside from that, before he passed, he gave me his approval of my plan to produce a book based on it, and of the sample of preliminary work that I was able to send him.

thanks very much, Carl - this is really exciting news.

Thanks. Okay, cheeky second...

And do you feel this is indeed another HoME volume in all but name? I appreciate that series is very much Christopher's own & that it is not likely to be described as such. But you do seem to be suggesting that Christopher essentially presented the shape/form of another Middle-earth work (in the HoME mould, rather than a standalone narrative type work) to you; and that this is what we will see (hopefully) next year.

It's interesting, but with Christopher directing his more recent efforts into presenting standalone publications like CoH etc, I (for one) really never considered him being drawn back to another more HoME-style work. This really is the most interesting piece of Tolkien news I've heard in quite a while.

I'll have to withhold comment on that, except to say that the announcement accurately relates the temporal and thematic context of the materials in this volume to (many of) those of UT and the later volumes of HoMe. As it says, if you like those, then you should like this.

I'll like this!

This is not a question as I know it is flat out too specific on more fronts than just this book so I'll post as an observation alone.

I found the mention of the Amazon series especially interesting, and one wonders given that it was said in a few of the articles posted online that Amazon would have some access to unpublished notes and texts that these texts that represent this volume are the same ones.

Wonderful, now we will have a Hobbit's worth of Middle-earth after books.

Urulókë wrote:

onthetrail wrote:
I am so excited to read this new collection. If you have any influence over the look of the book Carl, please, please insist that it has a black spine paperback as well as any hardcover.

I think it safe to say that authors have little to no input (or knowledge!) of what book covers are going to look like.

Good feedback though - hopefully HarperCollins takes note.

It would be great if The History of Middle-earth (as 3 books) and the one-book edition of The History of the Hobbit have a similar.....aesthetic.