J.R.R. Tolkien | The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, London, 1937, first edition, dust-jacket

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit or There and Back Again. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1937

8vo (191 x 134mm.), FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, 10 illustrations, 2pp. of publisher's advertisements at end, ownership inscription dated 1942 to preliminary blank leaf, publisher's light green illustrated cloth, after the author's designs, cartographical endpapers in red and black, bookseller's ticket of Carver and Staniforth, Canterbury to rear pastedown, dust-jacket, top edge faded (originally stained green), binding slightly soiled and rubbed at extremities, unrestored price-clipped dust-jacket with loss at upper margin of front cover and head of spine and extremities browned

An unrestored copy of this masterpiece of twentieth-century fantasy, complete with dust-jacket.

Tolkien began writing The Hobbit, the first book in his saga of Middle Earth, as a Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Tolkien's creative perspective was born from a childhood spent briefly in South Africa and then rural England, a short but wretched tour during World War I, and an avid fascination with German philology.

Although it was originally billed as a children's book, The Hobbit attracted a varied audience and has been wildly popular since its initial publication. Tolkien built upon the tradition of fantasy literature developed by George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, and the folk tales of Arabian Nights by inventing a new language—Elvish—and making it accessible for modern-day readers. Such creativity brought rave reviews for The Hobbit, which sold out its original print run of 1,500 copies three months after publication, leading the publishers to order more novels from Tolkien.

Author C.S. Lewis, fellow Oxford don and close friend, commented on this reception: "For it must be understood that this is a children's book only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery [...] The Hobbit will be funnier to its youngest readers, and only years later, at a tenth or twentieth reading, will they begin to realize what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its way so true. Prediction is dangerous; but The Hobbit may well prove a classic."

See lot 294.

LITERATURE

Hammond A3a