Lot 221
Tolkien, J. R. R. (1892-1973)
The Hobbit
£17,640
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 8 February 2023 at 10:00 GMT
Description
or There and Back Again. Illustrated by the Author. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1966. Third edition, second impression (sixteenth impression overall), 8vo, original green boards lettered and decorated in blue, map endpapers, 317 pp., colour frontispiece depicting Hobbiton, 3 further colour plates ('Rivendell'; 'Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves'; 'Conversation with Smaug'), illustrations in text (several full-page), with the dust jacket, spotting to top edge of text-block, dust jacket spine browned, concomitant fading to spine of book
Footnote
Note:
Inscribed by the author 'for Mr. I. Chambers, J. R. R. Tolkien' on the title-page, with the bookplate of the recipient Ivan Chambers OBE (1902-1998) on the front free endpaper. Chambers was a noted bookseller who worked for the dealership W. J. Bryce, which operated from premises on London's Museum Street in a building owned by Stanley Unwin, Tolkien's publisher. 'The success of Tolkien's writing, as well as his subsequent fanatical worldwide readership, was due in no small part to the author–publisher relationship that existed between Tolkien, Stanley Unwin, and later [Stanley's son] Rayner Unwin' (ODNB).
Provenance: By descent from Ivan Chambers.
