The Paperback ART of THE LORD OF THE RINGS

I HAVE been collecting the Ballantine/Del Rey, mass-market paperback editions of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and its famous sequel, The Lord of the Rings, since I was a young teenager.

For my purposes, I only wanted the ones with illustrated covers. The movie tie-in's with their photo covers are of considerably less interest to me. Granted, this hasn't been a difficult task because there haven't been many cover changes since the books were first introduced in the United States in 1965 by Ballantine. According to the data gathered at TolkienBooks.US, only six for TH, and seven for LOTR (not counting the photo editions or the rejuxtaposition of the same illustration). Thus far, I'm only lacking in ownership of LOTR's sixth change, from 2007, with cover art by noted Canadian artist John Howe.

The first Ballantine paperback edition of The Hobbit was published in August, 1965, two months in advance of their The Lord of the Rings paperback editions. Artist Barbara Remington was chosen to illustrate the covers. Remington was forced to embellish her illustration after she was given only a vague description of the story by the editor. That's why she drafted a lion, a fruit tree, and a pair of emus into her scene, none of which of course are found in the book. Tolkien was not happy with her artistic liberties, and at his insistence the big cat was erased from all subsequent printings (though inexplicably, none of the other discrepancies were), turning this first printing into an instant collector's commodity. My original copy, which I read to near ruin, was one of the later printings, and I consider myself very lucky to have been able to purchase this now very rare first printing, decades after the fact, and at a reasonable price.

 

Click to enlarge.

 

The cover art on The Hobbit was actually part of a much larger piece, a magnificent, panoramic painting of Middle-Earth by Barbara Remington that was designed to be sectioned off, in triptych fashion, as cover art on all three first paperback printings of The Lord of the Rings. These of course were published after TH, in October, 1965. Today's discoverers of Tolkien may not be fully aware of it, but during LOTR's first decade of paperback existence Remington's painting was at the forefront of all fantasy related art, rivaled perhaps by only the works of Pauline Baynes, Frank Frazetta and Gervasio Gallardo.

Seen above, from 1970, are the 27th printing of The Fellowship of the Ring, 22nd printing of The Two Towers, and 22nd printing of The Return of the King.

 

Boldly printed on the back of every TH and LOTR paperback was a "Statement From The Author," authorizing the sale of this edition and no other. The reason for this was that Ace Books had begun publishing unauthorized paperback editions of LOTR in the spring of 1965, believing the work to be in the public domain and therefore up for grabs.

ACE 1965 Editions: Cover Art by JACK GAUGHAN. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Not so quick said Tolkien, drawing Sting from its scabbard! Then after a year of much legal wrangling (and continual threats from Sting) the statement was deemed no longer necessary, every pirated edition having been either sold off or removed from stores by Ace, and yet it stayed on the back until it was replaced in 1973 by a color photograph of a now perpetually happy Tolkien.

The 41st printing of The Hobbit, in 1973, was the first to drop Remington's cover art, replacing it with a illustration actually painted by J. R. R. Tolkien (Bilbo floating on a barrel towards the huts of the Raft-elves). By now Tolkien was already known to his readers as an excellent, if somewhat amateurish, artist/illustrator and cartographer. The color reproduction and staging could've been better though; the original piece, done as it were in pencil, ink and watercolor, had much deeper colors, and it was also wider and taller than what was allowed in this cover's design space.

Seen above, from 1976, is the 60th printing of TH (back cover photo of Tolkien credited to Billett Potter).

Also in 1973, Tolkien's art replaced Remington's art on all three LOTR volumes. His "Hobbiton-across-the water" became the new TFOTR, while "Taur-na-fúin" (Fanghorn Forest) was selected for TTT, and finally, "Barad-dir" for TROTK. All three illustrations were done in pencil, ink and watercolor. The original works were, like Tolkien's drawing for TH, much taller and considerably wider that what was actually allowed.

Seen above, from 1976, are the 57th, 54th, and 53rd printing of LOTR.

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

 

Click to Enlarge

Click to Enlarge

In 1981, the art of Darrell K. Sweet replaced Tolkien's art on TH, its 77th printing, and also on all three LOTR paperbacks. Love him, hate him, or indifferent, there's still no denying the fact that Sweet was an absolute giant in the field of fantasy. His cover art career, spanning nearly forty years, was both epic in productivity and in quality. His unique, colorful illustrations promoted some of the biggest names in the genre too, such as Piers Anthony, Peter S. Beagle, Terry Brooks, Lord Dunsany, Robert Jordan, Katherine Kurtz, Patricia A. McKillip, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., and Tolkien, to name just a few. Would the Wheel of Time have been as successful without Sweet? Well, yes, almost certainly, but regardless, his contribution to Jordan's overall success cannot be overlooked, or for that matter even properly measured. 

Seen above are the 81st printing of TH, published in 1984, and the 72nd, 77th, and 76th printing of LOTR, which were published in 1981, 1984, and 1985.

In 1986, Ballantine went back to the same Tolkien art that was used previously. New font and color borders were then added, and although the illustrations were now smaller than how they were presented before, they somehow seemed more enhanced. Helping matters considerably were the improved colors of each illustration; they now rang truer to their original source material.

Seen above are the now revised, *17th printing of TH, from 1986, and the 79th, 82nd, and 79th printing of LOTR, which were published in 1986 and 1987. 

*(Apparently, during Sweet's time a revised edition of TH was put forth, hence the print number starting back at 1 again, and possibly with LOTR as well, although their numbers didn't change. It's all very confusing).

Don't judge Michael Herring on the strength of his cover art on the 1988 edition of TH and 1987 LOTR's. Instead, take the time to seek out the rest of his artwork, of which there are at least four decades worth of great material, representing fantasy and science fiction but also adventure, romance and mystery. Herring is noted for producing outstanding cover illustrations for popular series such as Baum's Oz, Burrough's The Land That Time Forgot, Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan, Jerry Ahern's T.R.A.C.K., and Stephen Greenleaf's John Marshall Tanner Mysteries, and if that doesn't make your jaw drop then take a look at stone cold brilliance of his James Axler's Deathlands series covers.

Seen above, from 1992, are the 34th printing of the revised TH, and the revised, 20th, 15th, and 10th printings of LOTR.

Ted Naismith produced an entire portfolio of illustrations devoted to Tolkien's works, and if you can somehow view any of them on a larger scale, or in their sequential entirety, then you will appreciate even more the absolute brilliance of what he did depicting Middle-Earth and its inhabitants. His color illustrations are some of the most definitive to date by any artist working under Tolkien's banner.

The 103rd printing of TH, and the 98th, 91st, and 95th printings of LOTR, seen above, were all published in the year 2000.

 

John Howe was another artist who truly "got" Tolkien, and like Naismith, he also has an extensive portfolio of paintings and sketches devoted to Middle-Earth and its inhabitants. Nevertheless, the 2007 editions*, seen above, representing the 138th, 134th, and 136th printings of LOTR, aren't what I would call his best foot forward, largely due to the cover's terribly restrictive design, but if you could see his artwork in their proper scale and clarity, you would be awestruck. 

*(Howe's art was not used on any TH mass-market paperback printings).

 

 

In 2018, Del Rey replaced its LOTR movie-tie-in photo covers, which had been issued off and on since TFOTR's film debut in 2001, with drawings by the "psychedelic" artist Michael James Bowman. These attractive covers were a welcome change from the staidness of the photo editions. In 2020, TH was also reissued with Bowman's art, followed by the entire Tolkien canon. You would be hard pressed to find a more handsome set of twelve paperbacks anywhere on Earth, or Middle-Earth.

Seen above is the 177th printing of TH, and the 163rd, 153rd, and 152nd printings of LOTR.

SOMEHOW, inexplicably, I've managed to hang on to the map of Middle-Earth that hung on my bedroom wall throughout junior and senior high school. It's now dog-eared and wrinkled, so much so that it now resembles an ancient treasure map. I still cherish it though. It was drawn and embellished in 1969 by Pauline Baynes, but based on the cartography of Tolkien, and in 1970 it was issued in poster format and sold in bookstores for a mere $2.50. To this day it remains one the greatest gifts that any artist has ever given to fans of Middle-Earth. Barbara Remington also had a map-poster constructed from her cover art, and it too is a treasure for all time.

Map of Middle-Earth by Pauline Baynes: Click to Enlarge

Map of Middle-Earth by Barbara Remington: Click to Enlarge

[© February, 2021, Jeffersen]