As It HappensPrecious 1st-edition of The Hobbit found amid reference books and children’s tomes
In a find that would be worthy of a place among Smaug’s pile of gold and jewels underneath the Lonely Mountain, a rare book specialist has found a first-edition copy of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
“It’s such a monumental piece of fantasy history. It’s one of the Holy Grails of book collecting,” Caitlin Riley told As It Happens guest host Rebecca Zandbergen.
The relic was found, not in a dragon’s lair, but amid reference books and tattered children’s tomes at a house clearance sale.
And while over 100 million copies of the book have sold since it was published in 1937, only 1,500 first-edition copies were printed. Since it’s a children’s book, many copies are battered and worn, with few still possessing their dust cover.
On Wednesday night, it sold for £43,000 (around $79,000 Cdn) through British auction house Auctioneum to a private collector in the U.K., setting a record for a sale of The Hobbit without a dust cover.
“It’s gone to well over three times my estimate, so I don’t think we realized quite how exciting it was going to be,” said Riley.
Value is dependent on the condition of the book, as well as the presence of the book’s dust cover. Other copies have sold for £137,000 and £60,000.
The discovery
In Chapter 4, The Hobbit reads: “You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
And for Riley, who works for Auctioneum as their resident rare book expert, it was exactly the kind of thing she was looking for.
“It’s just one of these things that if you work in my industry, everyone dreams of finding that one thing that’s going to make such an amazing story,” said Riley.
Two months ago, she received a message from one of her colleagues who was going through books at a deceased person’s house, seeing if there was anything the auction house in Bath and East Bristol might be interested in.
The shelves of books had yet to yield anything particularly special, that is, until he sent her a photo of a book with a green cover. It had an image of mountains at the top of the book, and a long dragon running along the bottom, and The Hobbit emblazoned on the front.
Riley couldn’t believe it.
“I kind of freaked out,” said Riley. “I think I probably nearly passed out from sheer shock.”
It wasn’t until her colleague brought the book to her and she was able to get a better look at it did she let herself believe that her suspicions were true.
“As soon as I saw him get out of the car with the book I knew straight away that it was exactly what I was hoping it would be, and then things got really emotional,” said Riley.
There and back again
The library originally belonged to a man named Joseph Hubert Priestley, brother of Sir Raymond Edward Priestley, an Antarctic explorer who had connections with the University of Oxford and communications with C.S. Lewis, another renowned author and close friend of Tolkien.
“It’s my belief that he probably knew Tolkien as well,” said Riley. “If he was running in the same circles as C.S. Lewis, there’s a very good chance that he did know Tolkien.”
That means he likely got the book from Tolkien himself. And while Priestley may not have known the future value of the book when he received it, the world Tolkien created continues to capture people’s imaginations.
“Demand for The Hobbit has never waned,” said Aimee Peake, president of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of Canada, and owner of Bison Books in Winnipeg.
And it’s not just The Hobbit. After publishing that tale, Tolkien got to work on his Lord of the Rings trilogy, publishing Fellowship of the Ring in 1954 followed shortly by The Two Towers, Return of the King, and many other adventures in Middle Earth.
Those tales spawned big budget movies including director Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy which won a total of 17 Oscars, and the ongoing Amazon Prime series, The Rings of Power.
“The world Tolkien built is novel enough to create a unique experience, while being full of relatable moments and charming characters,” said Peake.
Peake just returned from a trip to New Zealand where she visited the Hobbiton set, a key filming location in the movies where the titular hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, lives. She says the roughly 30 people on the bus tour included tourists of all ages, from across the world.
“The story speaks to individuals, and at the same time is a shared cultural experience through diverse generations and cultures,” said Peake.
Meanwhile, for Riley, much like the road of adventure, her search for rare books goes on and on.
“Who knows, since I’ve had this Hobbit so early in my career, what might happen next year, I couldn’t say.”
