Rare first edition of The Hobbit found in Bristol house sells for eye-watering price at auction
A rare first edition of The Hobbit found during a routine house clearance has sold for £43K.
The copy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1937 work was discovered tucked deep into an old bookcase at a home in Bristol. It is one of only 1,500 copies initially printed in September 1937. Such was its popularity that within weeks all copies had been sold and a second printing was undertaken.
The surviving books from the initial print run are now considered some of the most sought-after in modern literature. It was expected to fetch 10K but sold for £43,000 at auction after hundreds of bidders had signed up from all over the world. The lucky bidder was a private collector based in the UK.
'‘The amount of interest in this special book has been monumental,'' says book specialist Caitlin Riley from Auctioneum Ltd. “Within days of it going online we’d attracted interest from America, Canada, Norway and Australia. It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks.
“This result is phenomenal. it’s surpassed every expectation, and sets a new bar for the early first editions. To think that just a few weeks ago this book was sat undiscovered on a bookshelf in a Bristol house, and has gone on to make headlines around the world, is quite incredible.
“If we hadn’t had been asked to look around the house, it could have so easily ended up in the bin.”
The book had come from the family library of Hubert Priestley, a famous botanist in the 1930s, and brother to Antarctic explorer and geologist Sir Raymond Edward Priestley. Priestley had strong connections to the University of Oxford where Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.
Both shared mutual correspondence with fellow author C.S. Lewis, and it is likely that both men knew each other.
“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,” says Caitlin.