There’s some movement on the Tolkien publishing front. People out there who are cover collectors (and the variety and number of covers that The Lord of the Rings has had over the years is pretty wild), will be especially interested.
Rings of Power series tie-in covers
First, Harper Collins (through its subsidiary William Morrow Paperbacks) is set to release a Rings of Power series tie-in edition. The new covers for Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King will each show images out of the promotional poster series that we first saw in February. Props to u/mleaning on r/lotr for finding these covers.
Tie-in covers for The Lord of the Rings are, of course, not new. Houghton Mifflin released movie tie-in versions featuring imagery from Peter Jackson’s films for both hardcover and softcover in September 2001. (If our ancient scrapbook is playing nice, and you want to look at some ancient history, you can check those out here.)
Aside: I don’t love those as covers, honestly. I’m not convinced that they’re good imagery for this purpose. That is, the images don’t really accord with the thematic thrust of each individual title and it’s a bit of a stretch to make an association between image and content.
However, if they are your cup tea, pre-orders are available on Amazon already (though, amusingly, they’ve taken the covers down), with a publshing date of July 5, 2022.
TV Tie-in FOTR book pre-order | TV Tie-in TTT book pre-order | TV Tie-in ROTK book pre-order
Folio Society 1,000 copy illustrated limited edition
Or you could shell out for this new edition published by The Folio Society. It features exclusive artwork, an introduction by Alan Lee, and is beautifully bound, typeset and illustrated.
At a thousand quid, it’s also extremely expensive.
At the time of writing though, there are only a handful of the 1,000 copies left unsold. So, if this is your thing and you have cash burning a hole in your pocket, don’t delay. It will be published in mid-May.
Folio Society Limited Edition LOTR pre-order
If you like the look of this, but can’t afford the eye-watering price Folio Society has other editions of Tolkien’s Middle-earth books. Personally, I think this printing of The Silmarillion looks really nice even if the illustrations aren’t Alan Lee classics. At 49 quid, it’s much more reasonably priced, and ultimately probably better value for readers.
Post author: Staffer Demosthenes
