Conversion Table

In Atlas, Karen Wynn Fonstad provided a Houghton-Mifflin-to-Ballantine conversion table, which is reproduced below. The "table" is actually a set of formulae by which HM page numbers may be converted to Ballantine page numbers via arithmetic involving some empirically determined constants. Since these are discrete rather than continuous functions the results may be off by a page or so.

[NOTE: in the Fall of 1993, Ballantine issued a new edition of the mass market paperback of LotR in which the text has been re-set, thereby changing the page on which any given quote is located. Thus, the following table will no longer work with the latest printings, which may be identified by the change in the colour of the covers (the pictures are unaltered): in the previous set of printings all the covers were black; in the new set FR is green, TT is purple, and RK is red.]

HM Page               Subtract            Divide By            Add
-------------         --------            ---------          -------
FR 10 to 423             9                  .818                18
TT 15 to 352            14                  .778                16
RK 19 to 311            18                  .797                18
RK 313 to 416          312                  .781               386
Silm 15 to 365          14                  .773                 2
References:
Atlas, p. 191 (first edition), p. 192 (revised edition)

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Last modified: Sat Aug 19 20:12:37 1995