Some news from Publisher’s Weekly that shouldn’t impact readers of J.R.R. Tolkien but might be discomforting all the same. Long-time U.S. Tolkien publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt “officially filed for pre-packaged bankruptcy Monday morning, citing debts and liabilities of over $1 billion.”
The venerable company, in the publishing world for well over 100 years, has published every one of Tolkien’s works since “The Hobbit,” in 1938 which includes novels, essays and poems. The same company has published many noteworthy books about the author’s works including all 12 volumes of “The History of Middle-earth,” by Christopher Tolkien. (You can see the company’s Tolkien website if you click these words and you can read the rest of the Publisher’s Weekly story right here. Just a hunch but “The Hobbit,” will probably sell even more copies after December.
