Cheers for the info. 🙂

The lack of jackets for the Collected Poems was an economic as well as a design choice by HarperCollins, and we think a good one.

We bought a big roll of Mylar years ago, 3 mil we think, and are still using it on jacket-less books we want to handle frequently or otherwise protect, cutting to size with a drawing board and t-square. We probably got it from Talas in New York. We'll use this on our working copies of the Poems once we receive them.

Wayne & Christina

I am not in the know as to the design choices of this publication, but I feel that the style and design has been very specifically chosen. Using the images they have, on boards rather than dust jackets has an old fashioned feel to me, like the books on botony which were on the shelves at home when I was a kid. They would have no dust jacket and usually carried a simple but pretty design on the boards. It has that feel to me and I like it very much.

We each have our likes and dislikes but on this one I am firmly in HarperCollins corner for the choices made.

More generally, I can't stand dust jackets on books in boxsets. It seems a wasted use of material to my mind.

Everybody has their own equally valid viewpoints and I say this with great respect but if you need to protect the copies you read with mylar wrappers, does this not suggest a dustwrapper could be a valid means of allowing such protection? Although me being me, I would add further protection to protect the wrapper!
That said, the books are beautiful (hence my wish to keep mine that way - more easily achieved with dustwrappers, hence my whole point), and I am in awe of the work and skill that has been brought to bear on bringing these volumes to us. I thank the authors and HC for that and hope my preferences have not offended anyone.
I'll not say any more on this as I genuinely don't want to detract from the amazing publication that it is.

I have to say, I think the jacket-less design works really well on these. Overall the design seems simple, clean and nicely resolved and generally works well - I think HarperCollins did a really good job here (and I often think they don't!). Hopefully Rotolito have got their printing a little more under control.

Adding mylar is an option for protection (and I have occasionally done this on older books), but if I wanted protection for these, I would probably scan the boards, print custom jackets and put them in Brodart. I honestly doubt I will though - I will just make sure I have clean, dry hands and not worry about it.

The late Stu wrote:

I will just make sure I have clean, dry hands and not worry about it.

TBH, this is really it here. As long as you are handling your books with clean, dry hands you really have nothing to worry about. Dust wrapper or no.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/p ... en-book-review-john-garth

John Garth's review of Collected Poems.

BBC Radio 4 Front Row

Dame Jacqueline Wilson talks about Think Again, the long-awaited adult novel which is the sequel to her much-loved Girls series of books.

Actors Alexandra Roach and Joe Cole discuss their roles in BBC One's latest Sunday night drama series Nightsleeper, a thriller in which a night train from Glasgow to London is 'hackjacked'.

And on the eve of the publication of The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, the book's two editors talk about dozens of previously unpublished poems.

Presenter: Kate Molleson
Producer: Mark Crossan

The interview starts at about 26:30.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022syx