Book Notes

It may interest some readers of Tolkien Studies to know that, about six months after the release of the original trade and limited editions of The Children of Húrin, HarperCollins announced a sumptuous deluxe edition, bound in real Italian leather and limited to 500 copies, all signed and hand-numbered by Christopher Tolkien and Alan Lee. Each book comes in a custom-built clamshell traycase. Price £350.00, ISBN 9780007252244.

Coinciding with the above announcement, HarperCollins also released an 8 CD audiobook of The Children of Húrin, with Christopher Tolkien reading the preface and introduction, and Christopher Lee reading the unabridged novel. Price £29.99 / $49.95, ISBN 9780007263455.

Earlier in 2007, Tolkien's short illustrated children's story Mr. Bliss was reissued by HarperCollins in a reformatted, slipcased facsimile edition, newly reproduced from the author's original manuscript held in the Special Collections and Archives at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Price £16.99, ISBN 9780007255337.

Janet Brennan Croft and Edith Crowe have produced An Index to Mythlore: Issues 1-100, published by the Mythopoeic Press. This is a much more extensive undertaking than might appear from the title alone. A trade paperback of 314 pages, it has two main sections, indexing articles in one section and book reviews in the other. The articles are indexed three ways—alphabetically by author (with short abstracts of each article), by title, and by subject. The book reviews are indexed by the name of the author of the review, and separately by the item reviewed (sorted by author). An introduction by Janet Brennan Croft opens the book, and it closes with a welcome checklist of the 100 issues, giving side-by-side the whole number of each issue along with the date and the corresponding volume and issue number (the twenty-six volumes have anywhere from two to four single issues per volume), making it easier to find specific issues and their correct bibliographical citations. Price $25.00, ISBN 9781887726122.