Stu wrote:

eorl wrote:

Amazon Australia is showing a release date of Sep 8 for the HC deluxe and Oct 13 for the HC hardback. What the heck!

I think the Australian release date has been Sept 8 for a while -- presumably to allow extra time for shipping/logistics. I wonder if they will be getting a different print of the standard edition, though. This has happened before - both S&G and CoH had Australia-specific releases printed in the APAC region (though I'm not aware of any differences since, except for the pocket Hobbit where the 1st print went to Australia and the 2nd print went to the UK).

It was Sep 2 for quite a while, I’m sure, but what you said makes sense about the extra time for Down Under.

The Deluxe edition

Hopefully the photos will show most of the relevant information.

A few points stick out.

• The book and the slipcase are slightly taller than the other deluxe books, just enough to stick out on the shelf.
  
• The books colour is the same as Beowulf.
  
• No mention of This printing available for a limited time only
  
• It is printed in Italy, the UK Trade edition is printed in England.
  
• It comes in a cardboard box supplied by HarperCollins as Urulókë thought. This is a great move from HarperCollins as it means your book is much less likely to get damaged in the post.
  
• It has a fold-out frontispiece of the Trade dust-jacket image by Ted Nasmith.
  
• The endpapers are really nice as well, they show different manuscript images in the front and back.

I like that deluxe. Mine was sadly cancelled early on in the preorder stage and I never got around to sorting it out.

Trotter is the rear end page similar or do they vary the subject a little?

The back endpage is a different image of Tolkien's calculations.

Trotter wrote:

The back endpage is a different image of Tolkien's calculations.

Thank you.

Thanks for all the details, Trotter !

Mine have just arrived here in the U.K. via Amazon and with good protective packaging.

Thanks Trotter. It beats me why they chose the exact same colour and shade of purple when they could’ve slightly tweaked it so it stands apart. Anyway, it looks gorgeous!

That calculation page is amazing! I can't find its content in the book proper, is it Tolkien's calculation draft? (looks like a lookup table for decimal > duodecimal)

I provided this text to HC as one of the very few manuscript materials at hand that would be suitable for reproduction. (It is moreover a rather colorful text in the original, with a mix of ink colors, so suitable as a frontispiece had HC gone in that direction). The text itself is not given in the book. If any needs any assistance with reading the text, I'll be happy to help.