4 Dec, 2014
2014-12-4 1:06:56 PM UTC
An interesting thread on the
Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza forum about among other things textual accuracy in recent editions of
The Lord of the Rings.
"
We're preparing for our blog a revised comparison of Lord of the Rings editions, as it's been over two years since our original post. But for now: the new deluxe one-volume edition has the most accurate text. Its new typesetting picked up all of the corrections we had noted. The new three-volume trade hardcover from HarperCollins (with the Tolkien-designed dust-jackets) was meant to be fully corrected also, but somehow was not, and it even compounded some existing problems. For example, we had noted in our online addenda and corrigenda that the first line of the poem 'All that is gold does not glitter' (p. 170, l. 9) needed to be indented, not set to the left; but this direction applied to the original 50th-anniversary setting (2004), and was already corrected in a post-2004 printing. For the new three-volume printing, the line should have been left where it (correctly) was, but instead has been indented further. We're told that further corrections will be made in later printings.
We had hoped, when editing the text for the 50th anniversary, that subsequently a single text file would be maintained and updated, from which later editions (hardcover, trade and mass-market paperbacks, etc.) would be derived. But our analysis shows that there are now several settings, with different sets of corrections or continued errors, being published parallel to one another, e.g. the text of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt one-volume hardcover LR differs from that of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt one-volume paperback. In only small points, of course, but those will matter to anyone concerned to have the most accurate text.
Wayne & Christina"http://www.lotrplaza.com/showthread.p ... o-buy&p=626558#post626558
28 Dec, 2014
2014-12-28 6:03:47 PM UTC
I have asked HarperCollins if they could let me know when they make the changes in the three volume hardback set, which are from Wayne and Christina's blog.
A11. HarperCollins three-volume trade hardback (2014), with dust-jackets reproducing Tolkien’s designs. Both this edition and D1 were meant to include the same further corrections; A11, however, missed some of these and added at least two new errors:
On pp. xvi–xix, our note on the 50th anniversary edition is reprinted from 2004, though we submitted a slightly amended version. (The latter is correctly printed in D1.)
On p. 169, l. 7 from bottom, ‘Dear Frodo,’ (the opening of Gandalf’s letter) is still indented, but should be flush with the left margin.
On p. 170, l. 9, we had noted, in regard to the original 50th anniversary setting, that the first line of the poem (‘All that is gold does not glitter,’) should be indented, that is, brought to the left measure of the poem rather than set (with a standard paragraph indent) at the left measure of the larger text block. But the typesetter failed to see that this point had been corrected already in this edition, and indented the line still further, too far to the right.
For p. 1041, n. 1 (etc.), we had discussed issues with footnotes or parts of footnotes in Appendix A which needed to be within quotation marks, to indicate ‘extracts’ from annals or tales. The typesetter has misread this in regard to n. 1 on p. 1043: here, instead of an ‘extract’, followed by a comment not within quotation marks, followed by another extract, the comment has been enclosed in quotation marks, within a larger not in quotation marks. The note should correctly read, with all quotation marks as they should be printed: ‘The sceptre was the chief mark . . . with a silver fillet’ (p. 146; pp. 848, 861, 967). In speaking of a crown . . . Aragorn’s line. ‘The sceptre of Númenor . . . crowning of Aragorn.’
On p. 1100, the death date of Bingo Baggins still reads ‘1363’ but should be ‘1360’.
On p. 1136, l. 7, the name hámfœst (with an oe digraph) has not been corrected to hámfæst (with an ae digraph).
On p. 1137, l. 29, ‘butterflies to the falcon’ has not been corrected to ‘butterflies to the swift falcon’.
On p. 1173, index col. 2, entry for ‘Spiders’, the see also note should read ‘Shelob; Ungoliant’, with a semi-colon, but has been set instead with a comma.
If, or when I get an answer to when the editions would be changed to reflect the issues, then I will update this post.
21 Jan, 2015
2015-1-21 9:34:50 AM UTC
Trotter wrote:
HarperCollins have replied to this query.
"I can confirm that the below corrections have now been taken in to the latest impressions of the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings. Copies of the books are en route from the printer in China and should be in our warehouse around mid-February.
Readers will be able to discern which are the most correct copies of the books by checking that the respective copyright pages include “Printed in China” and have the following impression number:
The Fellowship of the Ring 8
The Two Towers 7
The Return of the King 7
I trust this information will be of use to you and to others."
I don't think that The Two Towers has any changes, so if you are looking to get just the books with the updates then you do not need a copy of all three books.
A bit off topic, but I think it is a shame that HC seems to be moving more and more towards Chinese printing versus printing in the UK. It just doesn't sit well with me (for various reasons, but principally loss of local employment). I'd be interested in what other people's views on it are -- I'm guessing most people don't care??
10 Aug, 2016
2016-8-10 1:56:13 AM UTC
Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but...
I'm sorry to see it too. I ordered the the HC 60th anniversary boxed set and was crushed to find it was printed in China when I received it. Outside the usual issues of supporting the local economy (be it the UK for HC or the US for HM), there's absolutely a quality difference between this set and my US-printed Hobbit and UK-printed single-volume 50th anniversary LotR. Finally, and I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, I just feel it's at odds with Tolkien's legacy. I'm not an expert, but I somehow feel he wouldn't be happy about it. In any case, it won't be going on my shelf.
Does anyone have a copy of this set (A11) printed in the UK? Was A2 printed in China?
10 Aug, 2016
2016-8-10 7:29:54 AM UTC
My copy of A11 was printed in Italy by Lego SPA, not printed in the UK.
10 Aug, 2016
2016-8-10 9:05:20 AM UTC
Nilonym wrote:
Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but...
I'm sorry to see it too. I ordered the the HC 60th anniversary boxed set and was crushed to find it was printed in China when I received it. Outside the usual issues of supporting the local economy (be it the UK for HC or the US for HM), there's absolutely a quality difference between this set and my US-printed Hobbit and UK-printed single-volume 50th anniversary LotR. Finally, and I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, I just feel it's at odds with Tolkien's legacy. I'm not an expert, but I somehow feel he wouldn't be happy about it. In any case, it won't be going on my shelf.
Does anyone have a copy of this set (A11) printed in the UK? Was A2 printed in China?
Mine is the first printing (i.e. 6th), and is Lego, SPA. I agree with you that the current Chinese production feels at odds with the author and material, and you are not the first to comment on the low production quality of the Chinese three-volume LOTR.
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