Another edition's cover
Cover of another edition of this book. The Allen & Unwin 1982 jacket has not been photographed yet.
Identification points are listed only where two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 30 Oct 2026.
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Issued by George Allen & Unwin in London in September 1982 (one Tolkien bibliography gives 20 September) as a hardback in a dust jacket, ISBN 0-04-823215-7. Tolkien's own hand-lettered and coloured pages are reproduced, each faced by a printed transcription, in an oblong format. Check for the Allen & Unwin imprint and the 1982 date. The 1994 HarperCollins reissue keeps the oblong shape, but its copyright page says the book was first published by Allen & Unwin in 1982, and it carries a HarperCollins ISBN and a number line. The Houghton Mifflin edition (Boston, 1983, jacket priced $11.95) is the American first. One bibliography gives the 1982 published price as £4.95, so no jacket price is recorded here.
Read the full guide to Allen & Unwin first editions, decade by decade, and check your copy's copyright page against it. Our number line decoder reads the printing from the row of numbers.
We have not yet confirmed the issue points that tell this first impression from later ones. Until we do, compare your copy's title page and copyright page with the publisher, place and year above: any later printing or edition statement means it is not this one.
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The cover image shows this book but may not be this edition or printing.
Allen & Unwin, London, in 1982, in hardback.
Points of issue are listed only where at least two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 30 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.
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