Days of the craze № 37: “The preservation of the world”
10 November 2021 | Beyond Bree, November, 2021, 5
Ballantine Books’ March 1969 paperback releases of Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham and Lin Carter’s Tolkien: A Look Behind “The Lord of the Rings” had advertisements on the final page. One side of that page was an ad for the company’s paperbacks of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The other side was for a photo book.
Ballantine was a leading American publisher of science fiction and in 1967, moreover, had begun what turned into an ambitious program of reprinted fantasy classics, starting with works by ER Eddison and Mervyn Peake. One might have expected advertisements for The Worm Ouroboros and Titus Groan at the end of these March 1969 Tolkienian releases, as if to invite readers to read more great fantasy.
Instead, the other side of that final page advertised “In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World”: Selections [from Henry David Thoreau] and Photographs by Eliot Porter.…
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