10 Jul, 2016
2016-7-10 4:31:58 AM UTC
I was wondering if anyone could give me their thoughts on how effective it is to use the printed price on a book to determine its print date, at least in terms of priority. Is it a reliable indication of which book was printed first if there are no better signifiers of date?
10 Jul, 2016
2016-7-10 7:01:22 AM UTC
10 Jul, 2016
2016-7-10 11:46:20 AM UTC
It's difficult to know what went on with that one-volume LR (and I can't think now why I didn't give it a separate entry when the imprint changed from George Allen & Unwin to Unwin Paperbacks, as it was clearly meant to be a new edition in the publishing sense, though most of the type remained the same).
Christina and I don't have what tolkienbooks.net is calling the first state of the first impression (1978) of the Unwin Paperbacks edition, but our 16th impression (1976) of the one-volume paperback has the same cover points, including the price £3.95.
We do have a first impression (1978) with the same (Baynes) cover, now with the Unwin Paperbacks device, with a printed price on the lower cover of £5.50, and also a first impression (1978) with the film tie-in cover, with the price £2.95. I think it's a good guess that the lower price was to encourage sales, building on film publicity. Our copy of this impression with a higher price is clearly narrower, which suggests that unsold copies of the first impression were later stripped and re-covered, then trimmed at the fore-edge.
We have a third impression (1979) with the film tie-in cover, with a sticker with $9.95, evidently for sale in Canada, affixed over the price panel on the lower cover; but also a copy of the same impression, not trimmed, in the Baynes cover and priced at £4.95.
Wayne
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