‘The Doomwytes’ vs. ‘Doomwyte’

Amazon.com has added a listing for the 20th entry in the Redwall Series– confusing the matter of its actual title even more. The title on the listing? Doomwyte: A Novel of Redwall.

As this leaves things, there’s a big ol’ question mark as to whether the title is Doomwyte or The Doomwytes. So, perhaps it would be helpful to run down what sources support each one.

On the ‘Doomwyte’ side of things:

  • The Amazon.com listing uses ‘Doomwyte’.
  • ‘Doomwyte’ is the title on the manuscript David Elliot is working off of as he creates the illustrations for the book.

However, on ‘The Doomwytes’ side of things, we have:

  • A Brian Jacques interview in the Contra-Costa Times titles the book ‘The Doomwytes’.
  • Audio of Brian Jacques himself, on two separate occasions, says the title is ‘The Doomwytes’ and he even goes so far as to spell it– w-y-t-e-s– both times.

Then there’s the fluidity of Amazon.com that must be considered– alongside the ‘Doomwyte’ listing went up one for Urso Brunov and the White Emperor. Less than a week later, that listing was amended to read The Tale of Urso Brunov and the White Emperor. So, Amazon is far from being an infallible source.

Where does that leave us? In all likelihood, we won’t know for sure which title is correct until the cover hits the web. In the meantime, the Newsline will continue to defer to Brian Jacques. He says and spells ‘The Doomwytes’, so that’s what we’ll use unless we find out, with absolute certainty, that it’s not the title.

On the more definite side of things, the Amazon listing did reveal the release date– October 16th, 2008– as well as the ISBNs (ISBN-10 # 0399245448; ISBN-13 # 978-0399245442).

Stay tuned to the Newsline for more details.

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About Martin the Warrior

Martin has been active in Redwall fandom for many years, founding The Long Patrol in 1996, The Redwall Newsline in 1997, and RWTV: Redwall on TV in 2001. He will be covering Redwall news as long as there is Redwall news to cover.