Talk:David Day (Canadian author)

Member of the Writers' Union of Canada

with more information on his biography on page 66 https://archive.org/details/whoswhoinwriters0000writ/page/66/mode/2up --Melly42 (talk) 14:19, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Member of the League of Canadian Poets

with full birthday: https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&id=3vgrAQAAIAAJ&dq=itv+%22the+whale+war%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Day%2C+David%22 --Melly42 (talk) 15:17, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Amendments needed to David Day Articles

There are some inaccuracies in the page for David Day (me) as follows:

• Born in Victoria, British Columbia (Source: Who’s Who writers Union Canada ISBN 096907963X published in 1993)

• Correction needed: I graduated from Victoria High School in 1966 not 1955 (I would have been 8 by Wikipedia’s current source)

Works on Tolkien

• A Tolkien Bestiary released in 1979 as per Wikipedia’s own publications list

Publications

These books are not mine:

• Please delete bullet Day, David (2005) Claiming a continent: a new history of Australia (not me) • Please delete bullet Day, David (2019 Antarctica New York, NY (not me)

In addition to the books listed, I have also written and published the list below:

Name of Book Year Published ISBN # Publisher Country

• The Burroughs Bestiary 1978 0-450-03442-9 New English Library UK
• The Scarlet Coat Serial 1981 0-888-78135-0 Press Porcepic Canada
• The Animals Within 1984 0-888-78135-0 Penumbra Press Canada
• Castles 1984 0-070-37280-2 Bantam Books New York, USA
• Gothic 1986 0-9204828-05-3 Publisher Exile Editions Canada
• The Emperors Panda 1986 0-396-09036-2 McClelland & Stewart Canada
• The Whale War 1987 0-871-56775-X Rutledge UK
• The ECO Wars 1989 0-245-54723-1 Harraps London, England
• The Swan Children 1989 0-824-98461-7 Piccadilly Press London, England
• The Encyclopedia of Vanished Species 1989 0-947-88930-2 Universal Books UK
• Noah’s Choice 1990 0-670-80669-2 Viking Penguin London, England
• True Tales of Environmental Madness 1990 0-7207-1974-7 Pelham Books London, England
• The Sleeper 1990 0-824-98456-0 Piccadilly Press London, England
• Aska’s Animals 1991 0-385-25315-X DoubleDay Canada
• Aska’s Birds 1992 0-385-25388-5 DoubleDay Canada
• A-Z of Tolkien 1993 1-85152-921-7 Mandarin London, England
• Tippu 1993 0-812-06498-4 Piccadilly Press London, England
• King of the Woods 1993 0-027-26361-4 Anderson Press London, England
• Aska’s Sea Creatures 1994 0-385-32107-4 DoubleDay Canada
• The Complete Rhinoceros 1994 095-1634267 EIA Books London, England
• Tolkien’s Ring 1994 0-2611-298-2 Harper Collins London, England
• The Quest for King Arthur 1996 0-816-03370-6 De Agostini London, England
• Visions and Prophecies of St Louis De Metis 1997 1-895-44964-2 ThistleDown Press Saskatoon, Canada
• Just Say No To Family Values 1997 1-550-96162-4 Exile Editions Toronto, Canada
• The Hobbit Companion 1997 1-570-36391-9 Pavillion Books London, England
• The World of Tolkien: Mythological Sources of Lord of the Rings 2002 0-517-22317-1 Mitchell Beazley London, England
• Nevermore: A Book of Hours – Meditations on Extinction 2012 978-1-926802-68-8 Quattro Books Toronto, Canada
• A Dictionary of Tolkien 2013 978-1-6-710-906-8 Cassell London, England
• An Atlas of Tolkien 2015 978-0-75373-004-1 Cassell London, England
• The Battles of Tolkien 2016 978-0-7537-3109-3 Cassell London, England
• The Heroes of Tolkien 2017 978-0-7537-3247-2 Cassell London, England
• The Dark Powers of Tolkien 2018 978-0-7537-3307-3 Cassell London, England
• The Hobbits of Tolkien 2019 978-0-7537-3378-3 Cassell London, England
• The Illustrated World of Tolkien 2019 978-1-64517-131-7 Thunder Bay Press San Diego, US
• The Ring Legends of Tolkien 2020 978-0-7537-3413-1 Cassell London, England
• An Encyclopedia of Tolkien: The history and mythology that inspired Tolkien’s world 2019 978-1-64517-009-9 Canterbury Classics San Diego, US

Personal Life

David Day has a daughter, Tarot (Source: A Dictionary of Tolkien, published in 2014 with ISBN 978-0-75372-827-7) and lives with his spouse, Róisín (Source; Heroes of Tolkien, published in 2017 ISBN 978-0-7537-3247-2 )in Toronto. 2607:FEA8:7E0:9F0:474:BF0D:C430:F235 (talk) 23:15, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I added your wife and removed the book by another author of the same name. I'll take a look at the rest later this week. Schazjmd (talk) 23:34, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Made the other changes, and updated list of books. Schazjmd (talk) 22:13, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello Schazmd, thank you for the corrections, changes and additions to my wiki entry. I’m sorry for not replying earlier, but for some reason I never received your comments.

However, if possible, I would like to request a few revisions of the current entry.

In PUBLICATIONS : Could Antarctica. New York. Oxford University Press, 2019 be deleted? This book was not written by me, but by the Australian historian David Day.

Also in PUBLICATIONS: Would it be possible to insert: The Cowichan. Canada. Oolichan Books, 1975 in this listing; as Wiki does acknowledge (and reference) its existence in the OTHER BOOKS section that begins with “Day’s first book of poetry, The Cowichan, was….[7].” This first book was first published in 1975 by Oolichan; while a second illustrated edition was published by Harbour Press in 1976. I have a number of substantial reviews of the book, however, like many small poetry press publication of the 60’s & 70’s, neither edition used ISBN numbers.

My third suggestion is not a correction, but a request for fairness.

In the WORKS ON TOLKIEN section, I have no objection to the statement: “The Tolkien Society does not include any of Day’s books in their list of recommended books on Tolkien. [3]”

However is it fair or reasonable to give such authority to the opinions The Tolkien Society fan club by repeating this statement twice in the same article. And more specifically placing it in the opening paragraph of the entry, so it reads: “David Day is a Canadian author and poet. He is best known for his books on JRR Tolkien, though none of them are included on The Tolkien Society’s list of recommended books [3].”

The Tolkien Society is fan-club. It is not in any way affiliated with The Tolkien Estate or any peer-reviewed academic organization or publication. The opinions cited by the Tolkien Society on David Day are all by self-published bloggers and authors of fan sites.

As all of Wiki’s own TEAHOUSE investigators of my site in 2020 have made clear: none of the “Tolkien Experts” cited by The Tolkien Society “can be presented here as reliable”. Nick Moyes (talk) 23:37, 18 April 2020 states “we cannot accept anything like it here without better sources than private blogs and authors of Tolkien fan sites.” And that this criticism was “not in accordance with WP:BLP policy.”

ThatMontrealIP (talk) 21:39, 18 April 2020 (UTC) concurred and opined that this was “a bit of a hit job”. And all recommended deletion of the entire vitriolic CRITICISM section.

Also, in the WORKS ON TOLKIEN section. In the interest of accuracy, would it be possible to remove the sentence: “Day was forced into bankruptcy by the protracted legal battle.[14]”

My reason for this request is that your source, Robert McCrum (Observer, July 6, 1997) got it slightly wrong. The Tolkien Estate was actually suing their own publisher, Harper Collins.

I was named in the threatened suit, but I hired no lawyer and had no legal costs. Harper Collins’ shouldered all legal costs as they acknowledged to me that the dispute was not really about any legal infringement on my part, but the failure of their editor to notify the Tolkien Estate of the commissioning of my book until it was almost ready to go to press.

It became a test case between the Estate and the Publisher, wherein The Tolkien Estate won out and was granted right to editorial control (and an effective veto) over any and all Tolkien related books published by Harper Collins.

Harper Collins paid me my full advance for the book, but apologetically explained that they could not publish my book as they could not afford to risk alienating the Estate.

I consequently took the manuscript with a few minor changes and a longer analysis on linguistics to Pavilion Books. As a courtesy, Pavilion sent a copy of the manuscript to the Estate, who then reluctantly agreed that there was no legal obstacle to its publication.

In short, I was not forced into bankruptcy by this dispute, as I had no legal representation or costs in this dispute between the Tolkien Estate and Harper Collins; or between the Tolkien Estate and Pavilion. In fact, on the positive side, I received two fully paid advances; and ultimately, the book has sold many hundreds of thousands of copies and remains in print in multiple editions and languages.

I’m sorry to have to saddle you with such a complex and belaboured explanation. I only state it here in full for the sake of clarity. I don’t expect it to be added to the article.

However, I am asking - for the sake of accuracy - that you consider the deletion of this one line. I think you will agree that its removal does not take away from anything from whatever interest there might be in this rather sad episode.

Sincerely

David Day

P.S. - As a footnote, I would also like to add that despite the fact that members of the Tolkien Society have been aggressively trolling me for nearly 30 years; my Goodreads site collectively has 21,205 ratings of my books with an overall average of 4.03 stars out of 5. Each of my books on Amazon is rated between 4.5 and 4.8 stars out of 5. To the best of my knowledge, I have never received a single bad review of any of these books in the mainstream press or anywhere in print. All of the attacks are on the internet and most of those are by people who have not actually read any of my books, but simply repeat criticisms (mostly about 30 & 40-year-old out-of-print books) they have found on Tolkien Gateway site on David Day. KingoftheWoods (talk) 05:29, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

@KingoftheWoods, I've made most of those changes. The bankruptcy claim is supported by three different sources. I'm not disputing your description of events, but the article relies on summaries of what independent sources say. Schazjmd (talk) 16:54, 3 February 2023 (UTC)