TOLKIEN, J. R. R.

£5,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Hobbit or There and Back Again. Second US edition, first printing, one of 1,000 copies thus, imported from the sheets of the larger second British edition. This was the first American edition to use the same binding and jacket artwork which Tolkien designed for the British editions. The runes on the American dust jacket were eventually updated after a reader pointed out they gave the British publisher's imprint. The Hobbit was published in Britain in 1937 and in a colour-illustrated edition in America the following year. The second edition was revised in light of its forthcoming sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Perhaps the most famous change Tolkien made for the second edition was revising Chapter V, "Riddles in the Dark", giving true version of the riddle-game between Bilbo and Gollum, rather than Bilbo's previous flattering version.

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