Challenge: Fellowship twofer
Two manifestations of identical works and expressions. I go into a lot of detail, but you don’t have to. I got intrigued by all works and relationships involved here. Sketch out a work, expression, manifestation, and item to whatever level of detail you want, and leave your entry in a comment!
- Work: The Fellowship of the Ring
- Expression: 1993? text edited by Douglas A. Anderson.
- Manifestation 1: Verso of title page says it’s the first edition of the 1999 US mass-market paperback from HarperCollins, ISBN 007123825. However, it’s a tie-in to the 2001 movie The Fellowship of the Ring, the cover has a still image from the movie, and the back cover says “Photo © 2001 New Line Productions Inc.” Perhaps they printed up new copies from the 1999 plates and put new covers on them without updating the t.p. verso.
- Item: Copy owned by the North York Central branch of the Toronto Public Library.
- Manifestation 2: 2001 British trade paperback edition from Collins Modern Classics, ISBN 00712970X, with cover illustration by John Howe.
- Item: Copy owned by the North York Central branch of the Toronto Public Library.
Relations:
- Tolkien’s work The Fellowship of the Ring is related to the work that dramatizes it, the 2001 movie The Fellowship of the Ring. Manifestation 1 has another, narrower, relationship to the movie work because it’s a tie-in edition.
- John Howe’s painting is a work, a referential complement to Tolkien’s Fellowship. The FRBR Report says, “The third relationship type, complement, involves works that are intended to be combined with or inserted into the related work. In other words, they are intended to be integrated in some way with the other work, but were not part of the original conception of that prior work. As with successors and supplements, some complements can be used or understood on their own without reference to another work (i.e., they are autonomous), others require an understanding of another work (i.e., they are referential).” A manifestation of this work is part of Manifestation 1.
- Things get even more complicated because both manifestations here contain the revised 1993 expression of Douglas A. Anderson’s essay, “Note on the Text.” (Anderson is a Tolkien bibliographer and helped Wayne G. Hammond with J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography (1993).) The essay here explains the history of the text of the book, Tolkien’s corrections over the years, American editions, typographical errors introduced in reprints, etc. Not only is the text of Fellowship here revised (“this new edition makes a significant stride towards such perfection”) but Anderson’s essay is a revision and correction of an earlier version (“This revison of the ‘Note on the Text’, undertaken for a new reset edition of The Lord of the Rings (to be published in various formats), replaces and supersedes the earlier version”).
- Both manifestations say “This reset edition contains newly drawn maps by Stephen Raw, based on Christopher Tolkien’s original maps.” The originals appeared in the original manifestations of The Lord of the Rings but reproduced poorly, so Raw “has therefore redrawn them all, very closely following the originals.” The maps here would be, I think, manifestations of a new expression of a work that is a referential complement to LOTR.
The level of detail to be stored and shown to users would depend on who they are. Tolkien bibliographers have far more demanding bibliographic needs than someone who just wants to start reading LOTR.