Last week we posted this story on the delayed release of the Annotated Hobbit, well now word has come on high from famed Tolkien author Douglas A Anderson on all the details about the book and the delay!
The Real Scoop on The Annotated Hobbit
I was very interested to see on your site the other day the report from Amazon.com on the availability of my Annotated Hobbit. I thought I’d write in with a bit more information and an update.
The Annotated Hobbit was scheduled to be published on June 26th, and the publisher can’t be blamed for the delay. It’s really all my fault—the book took longer than anyone was expecting to get it done right, and I hope the result will make people forget the delay. The entire book has been reworked and re-written, and besides a much larger introduction, and many more annotations and illustrations (including a color insert), there are a few choice new items by Tolkien, like the short poem “Glip” (who is a precursor to Gollum), and the full of the longest version of “The Quest of Erebor”—Gandalf’s own account of how he arranged Bilbo’s adventure.
The Annotated Hobbit is currently at the printers, and I’ve been told that finished copies should reach the publisher’s warehouse sometime in the third full week of August, after which the book will be shipped out to bookstores. So I’d expect to see it available around the last week of August.
Douglas A. Anderson
