Runes

[Eliot]

Hey, I was just wondering if somebody smart could tell me what those runes say on the inside-cover of the LotR? Thanks.

[Lantarion]

Well there are two different 'runes' or scripts on most LotR editions.. On the outside there is the Cirth, on the inside are the flowing Elvish Tengwar, or 'letters'.
The Cirth read (as far as I can transliterate them here and now):

"The Lord of the Rings translated from the Red Book..."

The text continueson the inside in the Tengwar:

...of Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; herein is set forth the history of the War of the Ring and the return of the King as seen by the Hobbits

There must be a thread like this somewhere, but here is a full account of both types of runes..

[Lantarion]

The runes/letters in the Silmarillion:

Cirth: Quenta Silmarillion, the history of the Silmarils
Tengwar: the tales of the First Age when Morgoth dwelt in Middle-earth and the Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils; to which are appended the Downfall of Númenor and the History of the Rings of Power and the Third Age in which these tales come to their end.

[Lantarion]

The runes on the cover of 'the Hobbit' are neither Tengwar nor Cirth, but old Anglo-Saxon runes which Tolkien sometimes used (Cf. Thorin's Map). They read:
The Hobbit or There and Back Again, being the record of a year's journey made by Bilbo Baggins of Hobbiton; compiled from his memoirs by J.R.R. Tolkien; and published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Note: The runes on the inside are the same as on the outside.

[Lantarion]

Ok, here I will start (or attempt) to include all the 'runes' from all the out- and inside covers of the HoME books (of which I only own numbers 1, 5, 10 and 11 at this point).
The first book (The Book of Lost Tales, part one), or the version I have it in, does not have runes on the outside at all, but has two rows of Tengwar inside, running on the top and bottom of the index pages. After some deciphering, I found that they read:
[?This is] the first part of the Book of the Lost Tales of Elfinesse which Eriol the Mariner learned from the Elves of Tol Eressëa the Lonely
the text continues on the bottom:
Isle in the western ocean and afterwards wrote in the Golden Book of Tavrobel; herein are told the tales of Valinor from the Music of the Ainur to the Exile of the Noldoli and the Hiding of Valinor

NOTE: in these books the recorded tehta for 'i' (a single dot above the tengwa after it) is used as the vowel 'e'; and vice versa.
Also the common full tehta for 'a' (the symbol that looks like the Roman letter 'C') is usually used to represent 's'.