J.R.R. Tolkien | The Hobbit, 1938, first American edition, first issue, signed presentation copy, with Tolkien's annotations

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit or There and Back Again. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1938

SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY, WITH TOLKIEN'S CORRECTIONS AND ANNOTATIONS ON 15 PAGES, first American edition, first issue, 8vo (206 x 151mm.), 4 coloured plates and 9 in-text illustrations by the author, publisher's tan cloth, upper board with title stamped in blue, first issue dust-jacket with publisher's "$2.50" price present on front flap, dust-jacket frayed and with some tears at extremities

The present copy includes all the issue points of a first American edition, first issue, namely the bowing hobbit on the title-page—replaced by a publisher's device for the second issue, probably at Tolkien's suggestion, owing to the conflict against the text's description of hobbits as bare-footed—and the endpaper maps mistakenly bound opposite to the order of the List of Illustrations. Tolkien described the first American edition as "not so bad", though he bemoaned how poorly the Rivendell picture had been reproduced ("spoilt... by slicing the top and cutting out the ornament at the bottom"), adding that "All the numerous textual errors are of course included", since the main texts of the British and American first editions had identical typesetting (quoted in Hammond, Bibliography, p. 20).

The neat pencil corrections in this copy include several of Tolkien's distinctive letterforms (notably his gamma-shaped "y" and v-shaped "w"). Of particular note are the decisive corrections and marginal annotation on page 30, where Tolkien changes Gandalf's reading of the runes on Thror's map so as to accord with Elron's later reading: he alters the phrase "'Five feet high is the door and three abreast may enter it" so as to read "'Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast'", and the accompanying marginal note reads "Cf. p.64 which is correct". Though a subtle textual change, it indicates the scrupulous efforts that Tolkien took to achieve full narrative consistency within his brilliantly realised fantasy world. Indeed, this slight error seems to have been especially bothersome to the author, as he discusses it in a letter to G.E. Selby of 14 December 1937, penned shortly after the publication of the first British edition (Morgan Library, MA 4373). Elsewhere, on page 27, Tolkien changes Gandalf's description of Bilbo from "Excitable little man" to "Excitable little fellow", also changing "more men" to "more of us" on page 294. These corrections follow Arthur Ransome's critique of Tolkien's references to "men" when the text is not referring to Men—though he retains "little boys" on page 117 as an insult to the goblins.

Though the second, amended, American edition was not published until 1951, it is possible that Tolkien's annotations in this copy date from as early as 1938, when the dedicatee of his presentation inscription was an undergraduate historian at Exeter College, Oxford. 

LITERATURE:

Hammond and Anderson A3b

PROVENANCE:

Given by Tolkien to John Gordon Beckwith (1918-1991), Byzantinist and curator in the Department of Architecture and Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum: presentation inscription to preliminary blank