Mon, Nov 13 1995 12:00 am

[Artist & Illustrator & Pictures]

If by this you mean that there is some art in Pictures that's not in
J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist & Illustrator, that's correct. We could have
no more than 200 illustrations in the latter book, so opted to include
most of those in Pictures, those most important, but not to
include others, so that we could publish more art not previously
published. We refer to art in Pictures that's not in our book.
And yes, smaller format, but for good reason. Or rather, there was
a reason why Pictures was in such a large format. Its purpose
was to reproduce art previously reproduced in Tolkien calendars.
In the process, unfortunately some of Tolkien's pictures were
enlarged considerably -- e.g. the unfinished watercolor sketch of
the Elvenking's gate, which in the original is quite small. Many also
were reproduced with very inaccurate colour. In Artist & Illustrator
we were careful never to reproduce Tolkien's art larger than it is in
the original, and to achieve the closest colour reproduction possible
given the technology (and given that we and HarperCollins were
working with a printer far distant, in Hong Kong). Only a dust-jacket
design for The Two Towers came out with colour slightly off, due
to a bad transparency; this was caught too late to correct.

Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull

We published the book you are asking about. It was written by Merlin’s father. We only printed about 250 copies which would explain why you have had so much difficulty in getting hold of a copy. Merlin has it in mind to try to get it set up on a print on demand basis and when and if this happens we will be happy to let you know. In the meantime I’m afraid the only option is second-hand booksellers.
Best wishes and thank you for your interest.
Mrs G Bissell
Customer Services
MERLIN UNWIN BOOKS