Tolkien Tuesday: "The Silmarillion" (30th Anniversary Hardback Edition)




Time for another Tolkien Tuesday post!

Next up on my bookshelf to examine is The Silmarillion. The edition I own is in hardback by Harper Collins, and I believe was published for its 30th anniversary.

Since it was originally published, The Silmarillion hasn’t changed all that much, nor seen as many editions as The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. This could be because of the fact that The Silmarillion is younger publishing wise compared to the others.

So let’s have a look at it.

The cover features cover art by Tolkien himself; and the texture is matte / paper like the others I've covered. Removing the dustjacket, the book itself is black with copper / brass embossment of the Tolkien logo as well as the book’s title on the spine. The text of the book has been fully corrected, with a few minor errors here and there that needed to be fixed. In more recent editions of The Silmarillion (this among them), a letter by Tolkien was included which explains the nature of the work, as well as its significance. Of particular interest to me of that letter is where Tolkien explains that he intended The Silmarillion to be published with The Lord of the Rings, and THAT work would have been called “The Saga of the Jewels and the Rings.”

There is a map of Beleriand at the back, as a fold-out sheet, which, like the maps of Middle-earth I blogged about last time, is in red and black ink.

And that’s basically it in regards to what makes this edition unique or different compared to other editions.

Why did I get it: It’s The Silmarillion in hardback. It also matches my copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Also, not that I would have chosen another edition, but there isn’t that much variety when it comes to hardback editions of The Silmarillion. This is the most accurate version there is, and it matches my others books.

Who would I recommend this edition to: Key word is, this EDITION, not this BOOK. Anyone wishing to continue their Tolkien collection that already own The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and want their books to be uniformly matching.

“Should I wait for a better one?”: Only if you wait for the next editions of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings et all to be given another edition / revision. At this point? No. Only because I don’t know what’s on the horizon. If you plan to get Tolkien hardbacks ‘someday’, wait and see what’s out at that time. If you’re going to get them now, or soon, then this is the edition of The Silmarillion that will also go with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, assuming you already own the same editions I do, and blogged about last time.

Overall: Well, you might as well! At this point, if you own The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the editions I blogged about, and if you plan to buy more Tolkien books following those, may as well go for this one. Not in a negative completist way, but rather, might as well get this book to match your others. It looks nice on the shelf with the others.

The ISBN for this edition is: 9780261102422.


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