Barliman Butterbur
Worthy Keeper/Bree Roué
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2003
- Messages
- 2,762
My copy of the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Lord of the Rings arrived from Amazon today. It is sumptuous.
I used to work in the printing/book trade. I set type on a Linotype; I ran Miehle horizontal and vertical presses; I used a huge electric paper cutter; I knew my way around a print shop and loved it. Perhaps I should have stayed there, but — I ended up travelling down other roads.
Bookbinders and discerning readers know the palpable pleasure of a well-crafted book. It has a heft, a feel, a look, a smell that gives such great pleasure! This book has all of that. It comes in a black heavy cardboard slip cover. The book's hardback cover is a velvety black. By that I mean that the material actually feels like velvet. The lettering and the designs are stamped in using gold and copper size which glitters against the black velvet. All three of the exposed edges of the pages are gilded, so that the book looks almost like a gold brick inside of rich black book covers. One can tell that the bookbinders lavished great time and attention upon each unit. The book has a great finish to it.
The papers are wonderful. The inside flyleafs are heavy red stock (probably an allusion to The Red Book of Westmarch.) Inside the front and back of the book are very large foldout maps: one of Middle-earth and another of Rohan. Between pages 320 and 321 are, on heavy-bond slick stock three color photographs of pages from the Book of Marzabul, done by Tolkien himself. They are the pages Gandalf described when reading from it just before their ambush by orcs in the Hall of Records.
The text pages are of heavy bond, of a creamy texture and color, wonderful to page over and thumb. There is a maroon ribbon bookmark.The typeface is especially graceful and easy to read. And no niggardly 10 point — the body of the text is in 12 point, with plenty of 14 and 18 point titles, subtitles, and so forth! It is a joy to hold and to read. Here and there is the judicial use of red ink where something is to be specially emphasized.
One peculiarity of mine is my strong aversion to Alan Lee's watercolors, which, thankfully (for me) are absent. This book is all Tolkien and onlyTolkien. If the reader has built up a personal inner vision of Middle-earth, there is nothing to jar that vision. Indeed, one has the feeling that with this book in his hands, he is holding THE authoritative definitive copy of The Lord of the Rings at last!
There is a section preceding the forward and the prologue about the incredible time and effort that was taken to (finally!) implement dozens upon dozens of errors that have crept in over the years — some that not even Tolkien ever became aware of — and to make a myriad of corrections both major and minor, covering everything from vocabulary through punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and whether a word be in italics or bold or "normal," all the way through continuity of style and layout. There were errors that crept through into all the editions of LOTR, some stemming clear back to 1954 and not caught and corrected until this very edition.
In this section we find that Houghton Mifflin will release a book in 2005 covering in great detail the adventure that was involved in tracking down all the errors and dealing with them.
Anyway, I look forward to reading LOTR once again, this time with a book that feels as if it had come directly from the hands of Professor Tolkien!
Barley
I used to work in the printing/book trade. I set type on a Linotype; I ran Miehle horizontal and vertical presses; I used a huge electric paper cutter; I knew my way around a print shop and loved it. Perhaps I should have stayed there, but — I ended up travelling down other roads.
Bookbinders and discerning readers know the palpable pleasure of a well-crafted book. It has a heft, a feel, a look, a smell that gives such great pleasure! This book has all of that. It comes in a black heavy cardboard slip cover. The book's hardback cover is a velvety black. By that I mean that the material actually feels like velvet. The lettering and the designs are stamped in using gold and copper size which glitters against the black velvet. All three of the exposed edges of the pages are gilded, so that the book looks almost like a gold brick inside of rich black book covers. One can tell that the bookbinders lavished great time and attention upon each unit. The book has a great finish to it.
The papers are wonderful. The inside flyleafs are heavy red stock (probably an allusion to The Red Book of Westmarch.) Inside the front and back of the book are very large foldout maps: one of Middle-earth and another of Rohan. Between pages 320 and 321 are, on heavy-bond slick stock three color photographs of pages from the Book of Marzabul, done by Tolkien himself. They are the pages Gandalf described when reading from it just before their ambush by orcs in the Hall of Records.
The text pages are of heavy bond, of a creamy texture and color, wonderful to page over and thumb. There is a maroon ribbon bookmark.The typeface is especially graceful and easy to read. And no niggardly 10 point — the body of the text is in 12 point, with plenty of 14 and 18 point titles, subtitles, and so forth! It is a joy to hold and to read. Here and there is the judicial use of red ink where something is to be specially emphasized.
One peculiarity of mine is my strong aversion to Alan Lee's watercolors, which, thankfully (for me) are absent. This book is all Tolkien and onlyTolkien. If the reader has built up a personal inner vision of Middle-earth, there is nothing to jar that vision. Indeed, one has the feeling that with this book in his hands, he is holding THE authoritative definitive copy of The Lord of the Rings at last!
There is a section preceding the forward and the prologue about the incredible time and effort that was taken to (finally!) implement dozens upon dozens of errors that have crept in over the years — some that not even Tolkien ever became aware of — and to make a myriad of corrections both major and minor, covering everything from vocabulary through punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and whether a word be in italics or bold or "normal," all the way through continuity of style and layout. There were errors that crept through into all the editions of LOTR, some stemming clear back to 1954 and not caught and corrected until this very edition.
In this section we find that Houghton Mifflin will release a book in 2005 covering in great detail the adventure that was involved in tracking down all the errors and dealing with them.
Anyway, I look forward to reading LOTR once again, this time with a book that feels as if it had come directly from the hands of Professor Tolkien!
Barley
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