Wow - that would be quite a project. But I’d love to see it when it’s done!
Slightly off-topic: I’d highly recommend you get The Annotated Hobbit, which has a lot of very useful info and derivations of virtually every character, place, riddle, etc. in the book, as well as examples of foreign illustrations (some excellent, some horrible). Definitely worth a look.
It’s been done. Wow. Unfortunately it’s not for sale.
But still…wow.
It hasn’t been done, at least not there. At only 300 pages, and with that little on each page, it can’t be anything more than excerpts. Full-length, that sucker’d be huge.
Pity they don’t expand it to 8 volumes. There and Back Again, Books I to VI and the Appendix. They could go smaller on the font of course then what they showed.
I’d love to work on a project like that but I’d need someone else to do the pages themselves. I’m not much of a calligrapher and I think that might take more patience than I have. I’d bind it, though, in a shot – that bit I can do.
The closest thing you’ll find that’s affordable (aside from the red-bound LOTR in the second post) is the Dover edition of William Morris’ The Wood Beyond the World:
It’s a fantasy novel that some think a big influence on Tolkien. Morris thought that such works should be presented in such a way as to be consistent with the contents – a craftsmanlike product with neatly calligraphied pages that celebrated the virtues of the craftsman, and so he set up a press to make such books. Unfortunately, such a product tends to be too expensive for the craftsmen themselves to be able to afford it, so I was lucky that a soulless megacorporation decided to reprint the book – calligraphy and all – in an inexpensive edition so a shlub like me could afford it.
I find that the nifty lettering looks cool and all, but isn’t my preferred style – the usual typefaces seem easier to read, or more familiar. But this is where you can get a fantasy novel i the sort of typeface you’re looking for.