I heard from HarperCollins that this edition had been reported to the Estate for review - there clearly is some confusion over it between the publisher and the Estate.

As far as I know the dispute has not been resolved yet, but it appears that the Estate asked the publisher to remove it from sale and the publisher complied.

Since the only copyright notice in the book is to the Peterson Publishing Company, there's no acknowledgment of Tolkien's copyright, there's no mention of permission to reprint his poem, and Childs World at one time had the whole of the book online at Scribd, it's no wonder that the Tolkien Estate might object. We do wonder if the publisher knew that "Oliphaunt" is protected intellectual property, or believed that The Lord of the Rings had lost its American copyright, which it never did. Childs World issued Oliphaunt as one of a series of single poems for children, and all of the others, by either Robert Louis Stevenson or Edward Lear, are old enough to be in the public domain.

Wayne & Christina

Findegil wrote:
Since the only copyright notice in the book is to the Peterson Publishing Company, there's no acknowledgment of Tolkien's copyright, there's no mention of permission to reprint his poem

Yes, I also noticed the lack of adequate copyright attribution when I gave it a closer inspection. Seems like an odd thing for a publisher to get wrong, though. I would have expected that IP rights and authorisation would be the very first things to address before even embarking on such a project.

Nice little book, mind. Might even end up being rare...

Stu

Just out of curiosity (since I don't have the older book) - did the publishers of the 1989 Oliphaunt: Beastly Verse receive permission to reprint the poem, or did it also fail to acknowledge Tolkien's copyright?

The 1989 Calico edition of Oliphaunt says it was reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Co.

We've heard somewhere that when Houghton Mifflin granted Contemporary Books permission to reprint "Oliphaunt" they thought that it was going to be just one poem in an anthology, not a separate publication.

Wayne & Christina

Thank you for the replies, Urulókë and Findegil.

It's quite an interesting piece of publication history.

I think this book is probably officially dead now. The series of 6 on the publishers website is now a series of 5.

by sheer fluke i got a copy in the few days it was available. a nice little book. great illustrations

We bought copies for ourselves and our two Tolkien Society godchildren

- wellinghall