The painting on the cover of the first US paperback edition of The Hobbit has a lion, a fruit tree, and a pair of emus. There are no lions in The Hobbit. There are no fruit trees or emus. J.R.R. Tolkien was baffled. He wrote to the publisher, “Where is this place? Why emus? And what is the thing in the foreground with pink bulbs? The lion was removed. The emus remained for many years. The artwork became iconic. It happened because the publisher was in a hurry - and therein lies a tale. This story is not new; you might even remember it if you grew up in the US in the 1960s. But it’s a great...