J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937

The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937
TOLKIEN, J.R.R (1892-1973). The Hobbit. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1937.

First edition, first impression of what was "the world's best-selling single work of fiction" (J.R.R. Tolkien, Life and Legend, p.45), until Harry Potter. “In this Tolkien invented an entirely new mythological race of 'hobbits' who, like their representative Bilbo Baggins, are solid, respectable, anachronistically English, and, as appears when Bilbo is sent off by the wizard Gandalf to help recover the lost treasure of the dwarves from the dragon Smaug, capable of unsuspected resource. The Hobbit began as an amusement for the Tolkien children, and reached print rather unexpectedly, a typescript of it having been shown to Stanley Unwin by a former pupil of Tolkien's. Once published, however, it was an equally unexpected success” (ODNB). This is the first state of the jacket, with the "e" in Dodgeson lined-through by hand on the lower flap. Currey 476; Hammond A3a.

Octavo. Original pictorial cloth, map endpapers; pictorial dust jacket, both after the drawings of the author (mild sunning to cloth; jacket restored at edges and folds with two small areas of the spine panel in facsimile, front flap with lower corner replaced where price-clipped); custom quarter morocco clamshell box.

Restoration to dust jacket does not replicate the original runic borders precisely.