Preface to an Imagined Catalogue: Why Collect The Silmarillion?

February 01, 2026

Preface to an Imagined Catalogue: Why Collect The Silmarillion?

individual entries are sometimes

idiosyncratic to this collector;

information of interest may

be buried, inconveniently

In 2019 or thereabouts, I drafted the following ‘PREFACE’ to an imagined catalogue of 1977 copies of The Silmarillion ; I mentioned the catalogue, previously, in the lengthier post Bibliographical Terminology: Excerpt from an Imagined Catalogue. Most of the content of this, now largely abandoned, catalogue has now made its way to this blog, in one form or another. The main catalogue entries, for example, have formed the basis for most of the longer ‘significant variant’ style article/posts (indexed here).

Reading over it again, today, this Preface—which I have lightly edited—reads like a sort of collecting manifesto. The final, concluding paragraph refers to the larger catalogue more generally; its inclusion is perhaps a little confusing, out of context, but I have let it stand as written.

PREFACE

EARLY editions of The Silmarillion are relatively straightforward to collect. Copies are easy to find online and relatively inexpensive; undeniably useful to the nascent collector. And if one takes abnormal enjoyment in collecting numerous different versions of the same book, then The Silmarillion is a publication worthy of your attention.

But why collect The Silmarillion in particular?

The Silmarillion might be regarded as the fulcrum work in Tolkien publishing, sitting at the cusp between the “primary” work published in Tolkien's lifetime, and the flood of posthumous material—presented with the ‘burden’ of commentary (beginning with Unfinished Tales in 1980)—that was to follow. In collecting terms, it is unquestionably overshadowed by that primary material: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (amongst others). And in Tolkien studies it feels rather marginalised, having been superseded—certainly for the academic and scholar—by the voluminous History of Middle-earth series. It is a work that sits in neither camp.

However, from a literary perspective, this makes The Silmarillion the most intriguing. Presented as a single stand-alone text, only the publication of the History of Middle-earth would reveal the more complex reality. The interplay of the internal imagined world of story-tellers, compilers, redactors, translators, and fabled books; the external reality of Tolkien the author, with his variant texts, feigned history, and material retold in longer and shorter forms in varying styles; and the editorial role Christopher played in assembling this material for publication—all of these features, together, combine to make The Silmarillion a compelling primary- and secondary-world literary artefact.

Beyond the literary there is also bibliographical interest. The Silmarillion utilised four different printers for its first publication, had its own special Methuen edition, and a ‘first thousand sheets’ deluxe. Christopher Tolkien's revelation that there is an unpublished work titled The History of the Silmarillion—running to ‘more than 2600 very closely typed pages’—is also tantalising. The Silmarillion is not without interest.

The focus of my own collecting—driven, no doubt, by the ease with which I could acquire multiple copies to examine—was always directed by my predominant interest: the printing, publication, and distribution of the 1977 incarnation of The Silmarillion; and, in particular, how this might relate to priority. I probably run dangerously close, in Carter's opinion (in his ABC For Book Collectors), to the definition of a ‘point-maniac’ or ‘issue-monger’.

In addition to points and priority, I also have an abiding interest in books that ‘tell a story’; signed copies, prize copies, books with dedications and marginalia, books with acquisition dates and purchase locations, and so on. The provenance of books. Seemingly insignificant detail of this kind can often reveal information of genuine bibliographic interest and lay justifiable claim to our attention.

It might also be helpful to state briefly, here, the aim and scope of the present work. In its basic structure and presentation this work is best described as a (somewhat bloated) ‘catalogue’. Although, unusually, a catalogue featuring only one title/book. And no prices; these books are not for sale. ‘Bibliography’ was avoided, as this is decidedly not a bibliography in any proper sense, although the catalogue does harbour some of the paraphernalia of bibliographical description. The layout is very specific to The Silmarillion, with its multiple printers; individual entries are sometimes idiosyncratic to this collector; information of interest may be buried, inconveniently. The focus is narrow. Comment—which should be treated with a degree of caution, being the conjecture of an amateur bibliophile only—will, I hope, still be informative.