The Fireside

  In the 'new blue' illustrated deluxe editions (of which The Hobbit  and The Lord of the Rings  belong to) William Morrow and HarperCollins will both be offering a deluxe illustrated edition of The Great Tales Trilogy ( The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin ).  This appears to be a deluxe version of the boxed set that came out last year. I'm also really glad that they were grouping this books together, rather than individually. Perhaps they'll do a Signature Paperback Collection boxed set some day....?  The HarperCollins version arrives in June and the William Morrow one in July. For anyone wondering, The Silmarillion  turns 50 next year. I think this year (2026) will be 'quiet' for Middle-earth books, so the publishers likely issued this one out now, saving The Silmarillion for next year. After that, I can see Unfinished Tales  in 2028, The Fall of Numenor  in 2029, and then Tales From the Perilous Realm  in 2030...

  The Tolkien illustrated collection: variation 2 includes this year's hardback boxed set of The Hobbit + The Lord of the Rings , the three great tales books in hardback, and the recently published illustrated edition of Unfinished Tales . The illustrated collection: variation 1 includes The Hobbit in hardback from 1997, The Lord of the Rings hardback boxed set from 2002, and The Silmarillion hardback from 2004 (there have been a few different illustrated editions of those titles, though the size dimensions do not 'match' one another). However, there is one title currently missing from The Tolkien illustrated collection variation 2 - The Silmarillion . There are two illustrated editions by Ted Nasmith - one from 1998, the other from 2004. The 1998 one had about the usual number of illustrations as per usual for an illustrated edition of a Tolkien book (between 16 and 20). It also had a 'mixed' paper type: regular for text, photo style for the illustrations. The ...