First signed Swedish edition from Tolkien to E.J.M. (1959-1961).

Wonderful to see, thanks for posting Tolkieniano

Thank you for sharing such an informative and interesting article! (si, sono capace di leggere in italiano)

Excellent Tolkieniano!

Lance here are close-ups of the textblock of one of my volumes. Not sure if you can do a good enough comparison to answer your question.

northman wrote:

Excellent Tolkieniano!

Lance here are close-ups of the textblock of one of my volumes. Not sure if you can do a good enough comparison to answer your question.

Thanks.

Yeah hard to see how it was bound but I think at this point we know now they issued a hardback and a large format softcover. I was really curious if the paper used, size and text block was the same between formats.

northman is that dust jacket illustration on yours repeated inside the cover as well? (as in the picture below)

This picture is from an old auction but it might be the same (very good condition) set on eBay which Dagoth recently linked to.

At least from what I can see in your photo northman, that green inner cover isn't there. It's starting to look like there might be three variations (sorry Lance!) i.e.

(1) Large format softcover
(2) Hardback re-bound using (1)
(3) Hardback with dust jacket

Perhaps (2) arose from poor sales of (1) and the publisher decided to re-bind?...

Predictable Matt wrote:

At least from what I can see in your photo northman, that green inner cover isn't there. It's starting to look like there might be three variations (sorry Lance!) i.e.

(1) Large format softcover
(2) Hardback re-bound using (1)
(3) Hardback with dust jacket

Perhaps (2) arose from poor sales of (1) and the publisher decided to re-bind?...

I was pondering that maybe (2) existed!

And here is a link to another hardback listing (no jackets) where you can clearly see the green inner cover…

Predictable Matt wrote:

northman is that dust jacket illustration on yours repeated inside the cover as well? (as in the picture below)

This picture is from an old auction but it might be the same (very good condition) set on eBay which Dagoth recently linked to.

At least from what I can see in your photo northman, that green inner cover isn't there. It's starting to look like there might be three variations (sorry Lance!) i.e.

(1) Large format softcover
(2) Hardback re-bound using (1)
(3) Hardback with dust jacket

Perhaps (2) arose from poor sales of (1) and the publisher decided to re-bind?...

Here is how it looks innside one of my volumes.

Thank you!

So the DJ illustration is indeed repeated inside the cover. I was going to suggest that this makes it more likely that the publisher re-bound the softcovers, but I'd say this (old auction) photo below goes against that, as the softcovers appear to be noticeably taller.

Might be time to get the rulers out 🤔

Predictable Matt wrote:

Thank you!

So the DJ illustration is indeed repeated inside the cover. I was going to suggest that this makes it more likely that the publisher re-bound the softcovers, but I'd say this (old auction) photo below goes against that, as the softcovers appear to be noticeably taller.

Might be time to get the rulers out 🤔

Also the page with the illustration is 'soft paper'.