Copy-Specific: Australian Distributed Clowes, Re-Priced

Another random shelf pick. 

 

S.016, a standard Clowes Second Impression variant of The Silmarillion. Copy-specific features: Australian ‘$12.95’ price label to dustjacket front flap; plain with no markings, origin not established. Original UK ‘£4.95’ printed price still present, not covered or concealed. Acquired from Australian (book)seller in 2006.

 

When this copy was originally for sale and how close to publication this re-pricing occurred is unclear. An original receipt/invoice—not associated with this copy—has been seen for the purchase of a copy of The Silmarillion from THE UNIVERSITY BOOKSHOP in Nedlands (Perth), Western Australia; the receipt is dated October 1977, price stated as $12.95. Contemporary news reports also confirm the book was priced at $12.95 in Australia at publication.[1] Recently I noted another copy, a Clowes First State variant, with a $12.95 ANGUS AND ROBERTON—the Australian publisher and bookseller (and printer)—price label. Mixed impressions, printed by any of the four printers utilised, may well have been on sale indiscriminately in the UK not long after publication. What copies were exported (and when) to Australia in 1977 remains unclear. Eighteen months post-publication, in March 1979, sales figures for The Silmarillion in hardback were quoted as 33,000 for Australia.[2]

 

This copy-specific Clowes Second Impression example further muddies the (already less than clear) waters in respect to prevailing export distribution assumptions and contingent priority claims. If anything, it undermines the key—for some, the only—“issue” point used to determine a book's ‘export’ status: dustjacket pricing (or lack of). This copy has a UK priced ‘domestic’ jacket but was clearly for sale in Australia. That said, dating this copy is tricky. Copies could have been re-priced significantly later than publication (September 1977); the $12.95 price may well have been in place for several years. Regardless, it still places a Clowes Second Impression variant—a copy most would regard as a UK domestic (not export) variant—half way around the world. Did other UK priced copies make their way to Australia? Possibly. Would they have been similarly re-priced for home market? Probably. Many questions remain, mostly unanswered. 

 

Another interesting piece of distribution evidence to ponder.

 

REFERENCES:

1. KEPERT, L. V. ‘Mighty footnote to Lord of the Rings’. The Sunday-Herald [Sydney]. (Sunday) 18 September 1977, p. 69.

2. TREWIN, Ion. ‘Dispatches from London’. Publishers Weekly. 12 March 1979, p. 35.

 

Also on SILMARILLION MINUTIAE

❆ Copy-Specific: NZ Distributed Clowes, Remaindered

❆ Price Net £4.95: Re-Pricing The Silmarillion, 1977–1992

❆ Code