Tolkien Descriptive Bibliography

Maybe it's better to wait for the second edition, if it will appear soon...?

if it will appear soon

The new edition is still at least two years away, I reckon.

Wayne

Well, that's something to genuinely look forward to; particularly more Silmarillion detail! As you've commented before; quite a lot has come to light since 1993 --& clearly there was much compression in the first edition in any case. At least two years you reckon? Still with (further) assistance from Doug? --or under your own byeline only (--or co-authoring with Christina)? Any radical format ideas, or just bringing up to date?

BH

Sorry to take so long replying to your comment, Khamul, it came in just as Christina and I went to Boston for a few days, mainly to spend time with the Houghton Mifflin archive at Harvard - research for both a second edition Bibliography and for our book on Pauline Baynes.

Actually, there was no compression in the first edition. St Paul's published everything I sent them, though with longer lines and tighter leading than I wanted (to compensate for a text much longer than they expected). I think, though, that these days an even greater amount of detail is wanted than was common in author bibliographies in 1993. I don't expect to change the format appreciably, or to do any renumbering except where I now know the entries to be reversed in date order; but I may rethink how to approach the very complicated Section G (Translations), and I'm not sure what to do about Dii (Separately Published Letters and Excerpts) since so much of that kind of material is now 'published' on ephemeral web sites.

Wayne

Thanks for the update Wayne, and I hope you had a great trip to Boston. I know I cannot wait to see the Pauline Baynes book (and of course an update to the Bibliography).

My own (very hasty) thought on the letters is: if it is published in a book (or catalog or other paper form) then it gets tracked in the bibliography (book). If it is only on the web, then a website that tracks where to find these seems most appropriate. Basically, for ephemeral websites, i feel a website is the best (and most dynamic) way to keep track.

That, or having the Biblography list all known letters would also be quite useful, even if there is no printed form to see the letter other than the letter itself.

Or......

My own (very hasty) thought on the letters is: if it is published in a book (or catalog or other paper form) then it gets tracked in the bibliography (book).

That certainly would be one way to do it, distinguishing absolutely by medium, the physical artifact from virtual text and image. Of course, this is part of the larger issue I have to address, which I hardly had to think about some twenty years ago: deciding what constitutes 'publication' for the purposes of a descriptive bibliography.

Wayne