Houghton Mifflin: 1997? hardcover (print sequence is HAD 40 39 38 37 on copyright page; back cover has code "6-97041" at bottom left; sticker on back cover is "09-21-01") Cover art by Alan Lee, 423 pages (plus fold-out map inside back cover.) Size is 6" by 9" Condition is near-Fine in a like Dustjacket: tight and square with the usual bumping to top & bottom of spine; minimal/mild uniform age tanning; slight overall wear. No stamps, marks or writing. Unclipped DJ ($22.00 cover price) has no tears; back cover shows slight wear.

A nice hardcover of the first book of "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien: The Fellowship of the Ring. Most people are familiar with the tale of how Frodo is given the One Ring and begins his great journey - this is an opportunity to have a nice new copy with the 1987 corrections to the text by Christopher Tolkien, which made the series uniform with the (British) Allen & Unwin editions. Apparantly the text of the American hardcovers has stayed the same for almost 2 decades while British editions made incremental corrections - this "second edition" is back in synch with the latest British text available at printing time in 1986 (all of this is explained in detail in the "Note on the text.") The original editions came out in Britain in 1954 and 1955. The reason why the Ballantine editions carry the the statement that they were the only authorized editions is that Ace Books took advantage of lapses in the copyright law and printed an American paperback edition without paying royalties to the author. (Though they later paid, after the public-relations damage had been done.) This is one of the all-time best works of fantasy, making my top-20 list for sure, and I've read the series about a dozen times. The series as a whole won the International Fantasy Award in 1957.