Rare First-Edition Copy of ‘The Hobbit’ Found in English Home Sells for Nearly $60,000
Experts found the volume while appraising the items in a home in Bristol, England. Only a few hundred copies are thought to survive
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A pristine copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit just sold for roughly $57,000 in England. The volume is a rare first-edition copy illustrated by the author.
Staffers at the Bath auction house Auctioneum discovered the book while sorting through the belongings of a recently deceased homeowner in Bristol. As Caitlin Riley, the auction house’s book specialist, says in a statement, she was rifling through a “run-of-the-mill bookcase” when she came across a pale green hardcover decorated with mountains and a dragon.
“It was clearly an early Hobbit at first glance, so I just pulled it out and began to flick through it, never expecting it to be a true first edition,” Riley says. “I couldn’t believe my eyes! There are a few key details to look out for when spotting one of the first editions, and as I looked into each one, they were all there. When I realized what it was, my heart began pounding.”
When The Hobbit was published in 1937, just 1,500 copies were printed. These books were covered in blue and green dust jackets designed by Tolkien, which depicted eagles soaring over mountains and forests. The first editions also featured ten black-and-white illustrations by the author. The novel, which follows a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, takes place about 60 years before the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Upon publication, the novel was a huge success. As the New York Times’ Anne T. Eaton wrote in a 1938 review, “This is a book with no age limits. All those, young or old, who love a fine adventurous tale, beautifully told, will take The Hobbit into their hearts.”
First-edition copies of The Hobbit are rare. According to Auctioneum, only a few hundred are known to exist today. “The idea that one sat untouched on a shelf for so many years without anyone realizing its value is not just unusual,” Tolkien expert Pieter Collier tells the Times’ Amelia Nierenberg. “It’s astonishing.”
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The recently discovered book doesn’t have its original dust jacket, and its spine is slightly discolored, but it is in “absolutely beautiful condition,” Riley tells BBC News’ Clara Bullock and Chloe Harcombe. Given that The Hobbit is a children’s fantasy novel, most early copies “have seen children’s hands [and] children’s coloring pens in some cases.”
But as John Garth, author of The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkien and the Great War, tells the Times, this particular copy “either had one very careful reader or no readers at all.”
Experts had expected the book to sell for a maximum of £12,000 (about $16,000). The final price, £43,000 (around $57,000), is a record for a first-edition copy without the dust jacket, Riley tells BBC News. But other first-edition Hobbits with book jackets have fetched much more. One sold for £60,000 (roughly $122,000) in 2008, while another brought in £137,000 (about $182,000) in 2015.
When Riley confirmed the book she’d found in Bristol was a first-edition copy of the iconic novel, she wept. As she tells the Times, “To be able to handle and sell one, and for it to come from somewhere so completely unsuspecting? It honestly feels like a miracle.”/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/Sonja_headshot.png)