Last week I acquired a first edition/printing of The Return of the King, with a fine condition and the dust jacket being even in VF condition after close inspection.

Yesterday I let an expert (Rene van Rossenberg, one of the major Tolkien collector's in the Netherlands, he owns a Tolkien store/museum) look at it and his conclusion was that it really is a first edition/printing, but the only thing that troubles him is the colour of the dust jacket. The jacket is made from an old and genuine material (smells 'old' too), but the colour is more light-grey than light-brown, altho the areas around the text are brown-faded.

The private collector I got the book from claims the dust jackets of all first editions (atleast LotR) were grey, while Rene van Rossenberg claims they were all brown.

So who tells the truth now? I hope someone can help me with this.
Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
Sigi

The dust jackets for the First UK printing of the Lord of The Rings were a very light-grey colour.

Hammond (page 95) Tolkien (15th June 1954) remarks to Beard that 'the jacket is now much improved, and is rather striking. I like the grey paper used, and much prefer it to the other colours.'

As the colour is so light modern facsimile dust jackets are usually on white paper.

The paper when exposed to the sunlight turns brown. A perfect copy should be light-grey, but in nearly all cases the spine is brown and if the front or back of the books have also been exposed to sunlight then they would be brown as well.

Dear Trotter,

Thanks for clearing that up. I still don't understand why the 'expert' I asked advice from, still keeps claiming the dust jackets were brown; mayb he doesn't expect any copies of RotK/LotR with jackets being light-grey?

I asked the same question on Tolkienbooks.net to get a definite answer, but I am starting to think my copy of RotK is in such a fine condition that the dust jacket is for 50% light-grey and for 50% brown-faded around the text/pictures ...

Kind regards,
Sigi

Sigi,

Normally with these books, only the spine is brown from sunlight, a 50% brown dust jacket is not in fine condition.

Regards

Totter

Dear Trotter,

I am sorry, after a better inspection the dust jacket is more grey (80%) than brown (20%), while the flaps are even complete grey.

Regards,
Sigi