Meaning of "Lugburz"
Graeme
news:<FsBQb.8716$Vy1.95...@news-text.cableinet.net>...
> > Interesting. That's exactly the passage I was referring to, but in my
> > copy it says "Mordor", not "Barad-dur". Either I'm hallucinating, or
> > it was changed at some point. I'll check it when I get home.
> Graeme, do you realise you have a first edition?
> And do you know how much they are worth?
> Maybe it is a non-first edition, first impression.
> ie. a reprint of the first edition?
> What do the publication dates in the front say?
>
> Christopher
I'm afraid not. At least not in this case. I do have copies of the Ace
edition of Fellowhip and Return of the King (which are copies of the First
Edition), but I don't have a First Edition of Two Towers.
This Lugburz change seems to have been made long after the Second Edition was
published. I've just gone through several copies of The Two Towers. First of
all, I checked the red leatherbound 3-in-1 hardback edition that came out some
time in the 80's, and it has the text that everyone else is reading, namely:
"All this about the Orcs of Barad-dur, Lugburz, as they call it, makes me
uneasy," said Aragorn.
However, I also checked three other copies, all of them are 2nd Editions. One
is a Ballantine November 1965 First Printing with the Brenda Remington mural on
the cover. Another is a Ballantine 42nd Printing (October 1973), with "Beleg
Finds Gwindor in Taur-nu-Fuin" on the cover. And the third is a late 70's
Houghton Mifflin hardback (11th Printing) with the Robert Quackenbush dust
jackets (which say "Revised Edition" on the cover, by the way). All three of
those copies give the line like this:
"All this about the Orcs of Mordor, or Lugburz as they call it, makes me
uneasy," said Aragorn.
So it wasn't changed for the Second Edition. The change doesn't even seem to
have been implemented until after Tolkien died. I guess it was regarded as a
correction rather than a change, and didn't require a new edition to make.
It's still slightly awkward, though. All through Chapter 3, Grishnakh's band
is referred to as Mordor orcs, not Barad-dur. In fact, I don't think that
"Barad-dur" or "Dark Tower" even appears anywhere in the chapter. Most Mordor
orcs would not live there, for space reasons, if nothing else. Grishnakh had
some inside information about the Ring, so one could presume he'd been there,
but it's not stated explicitly. So, for Aragorn to repeat Pippin's story back
as "All this about the Orcs of Barad-dur" is slightly odd.
Still, the old version was even worse. And I must have been annoyed by it at
some point to have remembered it so quickly. Probably what happened is that
Tolkien wrote Aragorn's line intending for Lugburz to mean Mordor, then when he
wrote Choice of Master Samwise, he changed it to mean Barad-dur specifically,
and just never caught the discrepancy, not having an e-text to go back and
quickly find any other times that he might have used the word.
Conrad B Dunkerson
news:20040130121120...@mb-m07.aol.com...
> So it wasn't changed for the Second Edition.
It's in my HMCO Second Edition, second impression also. However, refer
back to the Bibliography quotation from my previous post;
"Most of the errors noted for A5e.ii were corrected in the second
impression (1967). Further alterations made by Tolkien in the second
impression include:
...
p. 169, 1. 27: of Barad-dur, Lugburz < of Mordor, or Lugburz"
JRR Tolkien, A Descriptive Bibliography (pg 128)
> The change doesn't even seem to have been implemented until after
> Tolkien died.
Tolkien made the change for the A&U Second Edition, second printing in
1967 (as above). However, HMCO continued to use the text from the FIRST
impression;
"f. Second Houghton Mifflin edition (1967):
...
Typeset as for A5e.ii, first impression, except pp. [5-6]."
Bibliography (pg 140)
Thus, the problem was apparently that HMCO (and then Ballantine) didn't
make alot of the updates Tolkien specified in 1967 until much later.
> Probably what happened is that Tolkien wrote Aragorn's line intending
> for Lugburz to mean Mordor, then when he wrote Choice of Master
> Samwise, he changed it to mean Barad-dur specifically, and just never
> caught the discrepancy, not having an e-text to go back and quickly find
> any other times that he might have used the word.
Maybe. The drafts in WotR are consistent with that... the first form of
the Aragorn line used 'Mordor' and all versions of 'Choices of Master
Samwise' have 'Barad-dur';
"All this about the orcs of Lugburz (Mordor, I suppose, from the Red Eye)
makes me uneasy..."
WotR, Flotsam and Jetsam
"Leader says orders are for messengers to go to Morgul and direct to
Baraddur Lugburz."
WotR, Kirith Ungol
Pete Gray
>
>However, I also checked three other copies, all of them are 2nd Editions. One
>is a Ballantine November 1965 First Printing with the Brenda Remington mural on
>the cover. Another is a Ballantine 42nd Printing (October 1973), with "Beleg
>Finds Gwindor in Taur-nu-Fuin" on the cover. And the third is a late 70's
>Houghton Mifflin hardback (11th Printing) with the Robert Quackenbush dust
>jackets (which say "Revised Edition" on the cover, by the way). All three of
>those copies give the line like this:
>
>"All this about the Orcs of Mordor, or Lugburz as they call it, makes me
>uneasy," said Aragorn.
>
>So it wasn't changed for the Second Edition. The change doesn't even seem to
>have been implemented until after Tolkien died. I guess it was regarded as a
>correction rather than a change, and didn't require a new edition to make.
>
Perhaps only in the US? I have a hard cover Unwin 2nd edn, 6th
impression here dated 1971 and that has 'Barad-dur'. It has 'Revised
Second Edition' on the inside of the dust-jacket.
--
Pete Gray
while ($cat!="home"){$mice=="play";}
Graeme
> However, refer back to the Bibliography quotation from my previous post;
>
> "Most of the errors noted for A5e.ii were corrected in the second
> impression (1967). Further alterations made by Tolkien in the second
> impression include:
Do you have a list of all the changes and corrections for the 2nd
Edition (or is such a list in HOME somewhere?) I've got one for The
Hobbit, but know of only a handful of ones in Lotr.
> Tolkien made the change for the A&U Second Edition, second printing in
> 1967 (as above). However, HMCO continued to use the text from the FIRST
> impression;
I presume then that the Unwin edition changed it right away?
> Maybe. The drafts in WotR are consistent with that... the first form of
> the Aragorn line used 'Mordor' and all versions of 'Choices of Master
> Samwise' have 'Barad-dur';
>
> "All this about the orcs of Lugburz (Mordor, I suppose, from the Red Eye)
> makes me uneasy..."
> WotR, Flotsam and Jetsam
Interesting that this draft has something that neither edition of the
book has: Aragorn indicates uncertainty about what the word means.
If that uncertainty had existed in the First Edition, there'd have
been no need to change it. It would simply mean that Aragorn's guess
about the meaning of the word had been wrong. But surely an
experienced hunter and tracker who's been as far as Rhun and Harad
would have known what the word meant, which is probably why his
uncertainty didn't make the final cut.
Conrad B Dunkerson
news:21cb2547.04013...@posting.google.com...
> Do you have a list of all the changes and corrections for the 2nd
> Edition (or is such a list in HOME somewhere?) I've got one for The
> Hobbit, but know of only a handful of ones in Lotr.
"JRR Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography" by Wayne Hammond and Douglas
Anderson. ISBN 1-873040-11-3 (UK) or 0-938768-42-5 (US).
It has information on the publishing history of the various editions of
Tolkien's works (including UT, Silm, HoME, Farmer Giles, Et cetera) and
notes numerous errors and changes for many of them. A second edition of
this book was in the works, but has been on hold for some time while Wayne
Hammond works on other projects.
> I presume then that the Unwin edition changed it right away?
Well, in 1967. Up until then Allen & Unwin had the 'Mordor' text. From
that point on A&U (and 'Unwin Paperbacks') had the 'Barad-dur' text, but
Houghton Mifflin continued to use 'Mordor' until much later.