Denethor wrote:Voronwe_the_Faithful wrote:Denethor wrote:OK. Turns out Tol Fuin does get mentioned in the introduction to Unfinished Tales (p.19. of my edition). As depicted though, it is only in The History of Middle-earth.
Tol Morwen is only referenced in the published Silmarillion and The War of the Jewels (The Wanderings of Hurin). That's the real problematic one. How do you reference it without the rights to either The Silmarillion or The History of Middle-earth?
It appears that they are largely basing their maps on Karen Fonstad's
The Atlas of Middle-earth (in which Tol Morwen does appear). Whether or not they negotiated rights to that work, I don't know. The whole rights situation seems to be very unclear.
That was my initial thought as well - but Fonstad's rights to depict these places comes from the Estate. I don't think she can transfer them on further?
While it is true, of course, that her work was based on Tolkien's, she did a lot original work putting together maps based on information that is only textual which I would think would have its own copyright protection. For instance, Tol Morwen does not appear on any official maps; it only is mentioned in the
Silm and
WotJ. The maps that Amazon has presented are closest enough to Fonstad's work that it would seem likely that they would need to have obtained permission from her estate (the copyright notice in the book says Copyright ©1991 Karen Wynn Fonstad).
On another issue, I was wondering to what extent Christopher held individual copyright rights to the books that he edited. Looking at the copyright notices on my copies of
The Silmarillion,
Unfinished Tales, all the volumes of
HoMe and the three stand-alone Great Tale books (at least in the Houghton Mifflin versions that I own), Christopher only claims individual copyright rights to
The Silmarillion and
The Children of Hurin, as well as the notes and commentary in
Beren and Luthien and The
Fall of Gondolin. Everything else is either listed as "Copyright ©[year] by Frank Richard Williamson and Christopher Reuel Tolkien as Executors of the Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien" or "Copyright ©[year] Tolkien Copyright Trust."
Although, I understand a Harper Collins trade paperback copy of The Peoples of Middle-earth says "Copyright © The Tolkien Estate Limited and C.R. Tolkien 1996." So who knows?