‘Astonishingly uncommon’ The Hobbit e book sells for ‘record-breaking’ sum

An “astonishingly rare” first version of The Hobbit has bought for a “record-breaking” £43,000 at public sale.

The copy of JRR Tolkien’s novel is one in every of only one,500 copies that have been printed in 1937. It was found with out a dustcover on a bookcase during a home clearance in Bristol.

It was bought to a non-public collector within the UK by means of a web based public sale at Auctioneum in Bath, Somerset, earlier.

Caitlin Riley, the e book specialist from the public sale home, mentioned: “It’s the quintessential auction story. Everyone dreams of finding a rare item hidden in plain sight, and here we are.”

The e book, which was solely anticipated to fetch between £10,000-£12,000 at public sale, attracted lots of of bidders from all around the world.

Ms Riley mentioned the e book is in “absolutely beautiful condition” and he or she believed it bought for a file worth for a primary version with out a dustcover.

“House clearances can be tricky, stressful and troublesome… this could have so easily been sent to landfill, or disposed of by someone who didn’t realise it was there,” she added.

The e book got here from the household library of Hubert Priestley who was a well-known botanist within the Thirties and brother to the Antarctic explorer and geologist, Sir Raymond Edward Priestley.

Priestley had robust connections to the University of Oxford the place Tolkien stood as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College.

Both males knew fellow creator C.S. Lewis and it’s seemingly that they knew one another.

“It’s the connection to Tolkien and the important provenance that makes this book so special. It’s not just any first edition; it belonged to someone who very likely called Tolkien an acquaintance,” Ms Riley mentioned.

She added it was astonishingly uncommon to discover a first version in such good situation.

“Being a children’s book, most of them have seen children’s hands, children’s colouring pens in some cases, so to have one that appears to be completely unread and never enjoyed is really, really astonishingly rare,” she mentioned.

The Hobbit is among the most profitable youngsters’s novels, with greater than 100 million copies bought.

The story is about within the fantasy world Middle-earth and follows the hobbit Bilbo Baggins on a quest to seek out treasure.

The uncommon version that was bought additionally contains uncommon drawings by Tolkien himself.