Links to Articles
Publishing The Lord of the Rings
V The First Impression of RotK
VI The First Boxed Edition
VII The Readers Union Edition
VIII The First Deluxe Edition
IX Printing and Binding LotR
XIV LotR: A Bibliography
XV LotR: A Bibliography of Slipcases
The History of Middle-earth series
I A Guide to the Contents
II Prices on Dustwrappers
III Original Retail Prices
IV Print Run Sizes
V The Guild Publishing Editions
VI Shaping of Middle-earth Wrapper
VII Peoples of Middle-earth Pulped?
Other Articles
Christopher Tolkien Bibliography
I Think I've Got A Hobbit
Missing Images
Nasty Tricksy Hobbits
Printing and Binding The Hobbit
Songs for the Philologists
The Princess Hobbit
-- Ferguson Dewar
-- Letter from J. R. R. Tolkien
-- Gandalf: Not 'Magician' but 'Wizard'
-- Visions of Gollum
-- Of Smaug and the Jabberwock
-- Magazine Gallery
Tolkien Calendars
Tolkien the Esperantist?
Tolkien's Languages and Alphabets
Unpublished Manuscript Found?
During Tolkien's last years, when it was becoming apparent that he would not produce any more major titles, Allen & Unwin looked around for other ways of cashing in on the extraordinary interest that had grown up around Tolkien and Middle- earth. Their first experiments were with posters - A Map of Middle-earth, There and Back Again and Bilbo's Last Song - which had some limited success.
In early 1973 A&U decided that a calendar might be a good seller. They selected some already published illustrations from The Hobbit together with a number of pictures that illustrated The Lord of the Rings and even one or two for the then unpublished Silmarillion. The 1974 calendar sold well and, after a break in 1975, four more calendars were produced for 1976 to 1979 featuring more of Tolkien's illustrations. The drawings and paintings were then collected together in 1979 and issued in a 'coffee-table' style book called Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien.
The supply of Tolkien's own illustrations had been exhausted, but Ralph Bakshi's animated adaption of LotR came to the rescue and another calendar featuring stills from the film was produced for 1980. After this there was another a break until Rayner Unwin managed to persuade the Tolkien Estate to give their consent to use illustrations by other artists for further calendars.
Allen & Unwin had started to use Roger Garland to illustrate the covers of Tolkien paperbacks, so he was first in line to illustrate the 1984 calendar. Inger Edelfeldt followed in 1985, and in 1986 the calendar featured some of Michael Hague's illustrations for The Hobbit. Many other artists have contributed pictures in subsequent years, but the work of three artists is seen most often - that of Alan Lee, John Howe and Ted Nasmith.
All 'official' Tolkien Calendars issued by Tolkien's British publishers are shown below.
Click on an image to see a larger image and details of the artists and illustrations included, ISBN numbers, etc.
If you wish to see a much wider selection of Tolkien calendars from all over the world then you should visit The Compleat Gyde to Tolkien Calendars.
The table below shows where the days and dates given in calendars for different years are the same. This is handy if you want to re-use your old calendars - after all if you have gone to the trouble of collecting all those calendars from the 70s and 80s you might as well get some use out of them!
|
1972 |
1973 |
1974 |
1975 |
1976 |
1977 |
1978 |
1980 |
1981 |
1982 |
1984 |
1988 |
1992 |
1996 |
Equivalent years can be calculated for the period 1901-2099 using the following formulae:
- If year X is a leap year, you can reuse its calendar in year X+28.
- If year X is the first year after a leap year, you can reuse its calendar in years X+6, X+17, and X+28.
- If year X is the second year after a leap year, you can reuse its calendar in years X+11, X+17, and X+28.
- If year X is the third year after a leap year, you can reuse its calendar in years X+11, X+22, and X+28.
