Tolkien, J.R.R.

3 volumes, 8vo. Folding map after author's design printed in red and black at rear of each volume; ownership stamp or signature to front free endpapers. Publisher's red cloth, top-stained red, original white, red, black and gold dust jackets with central images after author's design; some toning or foxing to endpapers and fore-edges, spine panels of jackets toned, Fellowship of the Ring jacket with open and closed tears, some chips to head and foot of spine panel, chips to corners, The Two Towers with closed tear to head of spine panel, The Return of the King with open and closed tears to spine panel of jacket.  

Milton Crane (signature and stamp in ink to front free endpapers). Crane, a resident of Washington D.C. at the time of publication, had placed a standing order with Balckwells, Oxford, for each volume to be shipped to him upon issue. 

West A20-22

FIRST EDITIONS OF ALL THREE VOLUMES of the greatest work of modern fantasy. While serving in the trenches in WWI, Tolkien conceived of these tales set in a “secondary World," for consolation and pleasure; they developed over a period of forty years into an epic narrative. The Lord of the Rings has been read as an allegory for multiple good-versus-evil conflicts: post-World War I and the rise of Hitler; Christian myth; even the environment, with the Dead Marshes reflecting Tolkien’s despair over the desolation wreaked by military technology.