Re: Original books still in print questions

On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Steuard Jensen wrote:

> Do you happen to know when the second printing happened?  (In
> particular, is it at all recent?  Or have a handful of old copies
> managed to remain unsold despite the movie-inspired upsurge in
> interest?)

I'm not sure exactly when the second printing happened. I went to the Oak
Knoll Book Fest last September and found a cheaper copy in the damaged
books section of the store (it happened to be a first printing). A guy
who works in their press section mentioned the second printing had been
selling more since the movies came out, but I don't think he said when
they were printed. If I remember correctly, they had something like 20-40
copies of the second printing left. It's still listed on their website as
of today (at $94.00). They had a few copies on the shelf and if you happen
to be in Newcastle, DE you can buy it without paying for shipping. On the
other hand, you may want to wait for the second edition (although it could
be a while); earlier this year, Wayne Hammond wrote:

>I've not yet prepared a revised and expanded edition, but Oak Knoll
>Press have asked me to do so, and that will be a top priority once my
>wife and I have finished our two-volume _J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and
>Guide_ for HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin. I expect the new
>edition to be at least half again as long as the first (which is over
>400 pp.), to accommodate the many new titles, editions, and variants
>that have been published since mid-1992, to add much new information
>gathered in the past decade, to make the layout and typography less
>crowded, and to improve "navigational aids" such an index by page
>rather than by entry number/letter. In the meantime, I've published
>addenda and corrigenda to the _Bibliography_ in many issues of the
>occasional magazine _The Tolkien Collector_
>(http://www.bcn.net/~whammond/collect.html).

>> Is there a book source where this might be found used and/or less
>>expensive?

>I've occasionally seen a used copy at a lower price on abebooks.com,
>but not at present. There were only about 1,000 copies of the first
>printing, most of which are in libraries or being held onto by
>collectors. The copies being sold currently (and most easily through
>http://www.oakknoll.com) are from the second printing of 500, now
>co-published by Oak Knoll Press and the British Library.