[J.R.R. Tolkien]; Barbara Remington [illus.]

[Poster] Come to Middle Earth!

New York: Ballantine Books, 1965. Very Good +. Item #48630

[New York]: Ballantine Books, 1965 or later. Full color illustrated promotional poster produced following the first American run of Ballantine paperback editions of The Lord of the Rings (95x65cm). $1.49 price intact at bottom right with "U8250" at bottom left. Light fading and toning to margins with mild creasing and minor closed tears. Verso lightly toned with ghosts of previous owner tape. A Very Good or better example of a scarce piece of Tolkien material.

Amphibious creatures laze in the foreground at the base of a sparsely-blossoming tree as birds fly by. A hill of Hobbit holes and mountains sit in the distance while emus drink from a stream and a large dragon-cat yawns (roars?) beyond some bushes in the dusk. In an effort to preempt the simultaneous paperback production of The Lord of the Rings in the United States by Ace, Ballantine pushed Barbara Remington to create cover art for their editions with such a short deadline she couldn't read the books. Instead she gathered what she could from summaries and created her own colorful, psychedelic, surreal Middle Earth. Tolkien loudly disliked these representations, thoroughly confused by the emus, lazy-looking lizards, and "pumpkins in trees," but American audiences seemed drawn to her imaginations of the world.

The art of this poster was the cover for The Fellowship of the Ring, originally part of a triptych done by Remington. The bottom reads "Come to Middle Earth!" in classic travel-poster style.

Only one holding listed in OCLC at Northwestern.

Price: $2,000.00