The ring-verse page in The Lord of the Rings

checked a few datapoints:

-present in the revised edition, 7th impression 1973
-present in the ACE set
-present in the 1963 impressions of the first edition
-absent in the 1971 one volume BCA hardback

a 'feature' introduced with publishing a one volume edition and limited to one vol editions before the 50th anniversary editions?

The presence or absence of the title THE LORD OF THE RINGS above the Ring Verse can be traced in editions of The Lord of the Rings from 1954 to 1991 in the Descriptive Bibliography, in the descriptions of the individual volumes, e.g. 'THE LORD OF THE RINGS | [poem, "Three Rings for the Elven-kings" etc.]'.

The title appears in editions with the original typesetting in three volumes, and in those that have the original typesetting revised (such as the Allen & Unwin second edition), and those whose typesetting closely follows that of the old standard edition.

The title was omitted, however, as Beregond notes, in the 1968 one-volume paperback and the 1969 India paper edition, which shared a new typesetting also used in later one-volume editions.

In 1994, The Lord of the Rings was reset again, from the previous one-volume setting, thus likewise without a title above the Ring Verse. This new setting carried into still further editions, one of which (2002) was the copy-text for the 50th anniversary edition in 2004.

I have seen no evidence that Tolkien formally called the Ring Verse 'The Lord of the Rings', and would guess that the title was placed above the poem in the first edition - three volumes of an unfamiliar work, published separately over a period of months - as an indication that each is part of a larger work, in addition to similar information on the title-page and dust-jacket. This, essentially a half-title page, may have been an editorial rather than an authorial decision; in either case, Tolkien would have seen the title in proof. I would also guess that when the first one-volume edition was prepared, the title above the poem was omitted as unnecessary, the whole text now being self-contained.

Wayne

Thank you, Wayne, for this clear account. I agree that it would have been placed there in the three-volume editions as being the title of the whole work. That was how it aroused my interest: in Ohlmarks' translation the titlepages only gave the title for each volume. The title of the work was however mentioned in the synopses in the second and third volume, and in characteristic Ohlmarks-fashion it was given as "Ringarnas Ring" in the second volume before it became "Härskarringen" in the third volume, and he used the same title (respectively) above the ring-verse. But it took me a long time to notice that when it says "Ringarnas härskare" above the verse in the first volume, that must therefore be accounted to be his first translation of the title "The Lord of the Rings".