Farmer Giles Nelson 1961

Hey Berelach, I have managed to get a copy of this 1961 Nelson Edition, which is actually an uncorrected proof.
I also have the "First published in USA in 1961" on the copyright page
The back of the DJ is blank. Is it common for this edition or not?

I didn't read the Nelson correspondence in the A&U Archive and I'm not at home to check addenda and corrigenda in The Tolkien Collector, but it seems odd that Nelson would have been able to obtain 1000 sets of sheets from the 1950 HM edition when, according to the correspondence, HM reported that they were out of stock in 1960, and allowed the rights to revert to A&U.

The Nelson edition appeared in the The New York Times Book Review on May 13. This prompted HM to ask A&U how Nelson had been able to obtain the rights - they had not recorded the reversion of rights - another reason it seems odd that Nelson would have been able to obtain the 1000 sets of 1950 sheets.

It seems unlikely, but could they be sheets of the 1957 A&U edition? 2000 of the 3950 were bound in 1957. The records I have don't cover anything later.

The back/lower cover of the FG jacket has details of other Tolkien books, so would have had to have been omitted from Nelson copies - HM held the American rights.

Something odd happened with impression numbers on the jackets for FG in the 1960s - 3rd impressions in 4th jackets, 4th impressions in 5th jackets, etc.

My theory is that A&U had already printed their jackets for the 3rd impression in 1961, so when they sold sheets to Nelson they had to print a batch of jackets as well and, to keep costs down, printed jackets for the A&U 4th impression at the same time - so both the A&U and Nelson 3rd impression copies have jackets that state 4th impression even though that was not printed until 1965.

Thank you Deagol, your theory seems really convincing.
If that could help, here is the card of the review copy of mine :

It indicates, April 9th, 1962 as publication date.

By the way, don't know if (and what's) the difference between a review copy and uncorrected proof.

An uncorrected proof is used by the Publisher and the Author to check what the book will look like when it is printed.

A review copy is sent to people for them to write a review to be published in a newspaper or journal. Today, it would also include an on-line review.

Thanks Trotter, this is all clear.

Let me try to make this clearer, at least as clear as the Nelson-Allen & Unwin correspondence will allow.

A&U offered the American rights to Nelson on 10 June 1961 after determining that Houghton Mifflin had allowed Farmer Giles to go out of print. A&U appear to have done a printing just for Nelson, with the title-leaf integral (as it is in my and Christina's copy, which does indeed have a blank lower panel on the jacket); this was shipped to Nelson on 29 December 1961, and a March 1962 letter from Nelson records that the quantity was 1,000 copies. My comment in the Bibliography about cancel titles appears to have been an incorrect assumption, or I muddled the first 2,000 copies with the job lot (see below); I hadn't seen a Nelson copy at the time of writing.

On 15 March 1962, Nelson wrote to A&U that sales of their edition were greater than anticipated, and ordered a second 1,000 copies. (Despite the official publication date of 9 April, advance sales began in March, hence my phrasing in the Bibliography -- without, then, knowledge of the official date -- "Beginning in March 1962, Nelson's sold".)

On 27 March 1962, Nelson reported to A&U that they had found "a large quantity" of Farmer Giles with a jobber (an intermediary used by publishers to distribute books to booksellers and libraries) at a clearance price. On 4 April they informed A&U that these copies had the Houghton Mifflin imprint and a 1950 date. On 13 April, they ordered 1,000 copies from A&U -- my notes from way back when say only this, but it probably meant 1,000 title-leaves for cancellation, because Nelson made sure that A&U knew that Nelson's original title-leaf had had a "first published . . . 1961" notice. (It may be that Nelson never distinguished their printings on the copyright page. But I haven't seen enough copies to make a judgement.)

On 22 May 1962 Nelson told A&U that they had had a complaint from Houghton Mifflin, who claimed that their American rights to Farmer Giles had never been rescinded, and they were planning to reprint. I can't find in my (scattered and now ancient) notes any confirmation of A&U informing Houghton Mifflin officially of the loss of rights, though Rayner Unwin reported to Tolkien on 30 May 1961 (Chronology, p. 607) that Farmer Giles was out of print in the USA, and A&U were trying to get it placed with some other American publisher. My guess is that Houghton Mifflin's sales weren't as good as they wanted them to be, and let it go, if a jobber could have a large number of copies available at clearance; and if they did that, Houghton Mifflin probably did let the title go out of print, or at least out of stock which would have amounted to the same thing.

The next word I've found in the A&U files is a note from 1963 that Houghton Mifflin may want to reprint Farmer Giles soon, by offset, but A&U evidently waited until Nelson's stock was depleted before returning the rights to Houghton Mifflin in 1964.

Publishers have often sent out uncorrected proofs as review copies, rather than wait for finished copies to be available.

Wayne

Thanks, that really helps to fill out the story.

To fill in a couple of the blanks, a bookseller from California contacted A&U in August 1960 to try to obtain copies of FG because HM had returned their order as "Out of stock indefinitely, order cancelled".

On 25 August, A&U offered HM copies and asked if they could sell to US customers if HM did not want to continue. HM declined to take copies on 2 September and on 8 September A&U said they would assume that the rights had reverted to them.

My next notes are for May 1962, when there is an exchange between H&M and A&U where HM raise objections to the Nelson edition and A&U refer them back to the 1960 correspondence.

I never got around to typing up my non-LR notes for 1963 onwards, so after that I can't say without digging in box files.

All of that sounds familiar, Deagol, and is probably in my notes somewhere, but overlooked when I reviewed my scribbles this morning. I have a drawer full of notebooks filled with bibliographical research over a period of years -- in the Unwin Hyman and HarperCollins offices, at Reading, Marquette, Harvard (their HM archive), etc., etc. -- before there was such a thing as a personal computer. And then I too have my box files.

Thanks Findegil and Deagol for the detailed information. I've enjoyed reading this thread today.