Inside Look at the New Illustrated Edition of The Silmarillion (Video)
Video Transcript:
Hello and Welcome! Thank you for joining me for Tea with Tolkien. I’m Kaitlyn, creator and cultivator of Tea with Tolkien, an online community inspired by the life, works, and faith of JRR Tolkien.
Today we are taking a first look at this brand new Illustrated edition of The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.
Available for the first time ever, this edition includes full-color paintings, illustrations, designs, and maps done by Tolkien himself. It also includes the full text of The Silmarillion printed in two colors, which is a very lovely touch. The book comes with two poster-sized fold out maps of Beleriand -- one of which is quite sketched out, which I feel provides a very interesting look behind-the-scenes into Tolkien’s process as he was filling out his world and developing its tales. Both of these maps are incredibly cool and I’m probably going to frame them.
There’s also a very bright lime green coating to the edges of the pages, overlain with more Tengwar script in white, which matches the script on the dust jacket. The primary focus of the dust jacket, which I thought was very very sweet, is the heraldic device Tolkein created for Luthien. You can also see this same design once the dust cover is removed and it’s imprinted onto the cloth cover in metallic green and silver. This same design is then also printed on the spine as well. I was very impressed by this because oftentimes once a dust jacket is removed, the book itself is quite plain -- but this wasn’t the case with this edition.
Inside the book, we’ve got a list of illustrations, the foreword, preface as usual -- and our beloved Waldman Letter, as well as a note on the illustrations which is quite illuminating. There is also a small illustration on the title page for each chapter which I found was such a lovely touch. The pages are also very nice and thick which makes me feel even more confident in actually using this edition as a reading copy, I don’t feel like it’s too fragile to carry around with me.
If you’re trying to decide whether to purchase the standard or deluxe edition, I will say that the standard one which I’ve purchased is incredibly beautiful on its own. I personally prefer the less fancy editions of books, especially one I read so often as The Silmarillion, because sometimes if a book is too pretty I’ll be too intimidated to pick it up -- but I know that’s just my personal preference.
The Illustrated Edition is priced at $65 but as it’s just been released, it’s been on sale at most booksellers for between $40-50; the Deluxe Edition runs for about $120-$140.
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