A rare first edition of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, discovered during a house clearance in Bristol, has sold at auction for £43,000. The book, bought by a private UK collector, is one of only 1,500 copies printed in 1937, of which only a few hundred are believed to still exist.
The auction house Auctioneum found the novel, which lacks its dust cover, on a bookcase at a home in Bristol. Bidders from around the world drove the price to more than four times the expected amount. Caitlin Riley, Auctioneum's rare books specialist, said: 'It's a wonderful result for a very special book.'
Riley added: 'Nobody knew it was there. It was just a run-of-the-mill bookcase. It was clearly an early Hobbit at first glance, so I just pulled it out and began to flick through it, never expecting it to be a true first edition.' The copy is bound in light green cloth and features black-and-white illustrations by Tolkien.
The book was passed down in the family library of Hubert Priestley, a botanist connected to the University of Oxford and brother of Antarctic explorer Sir Raymond Edward Priestley. Auctioneum noted that Priestley and Tolkien likely knew each other, as both corresponded with fellow author CS Lewis. The Hobbit has sold over 100 million copies and was adapted into a film trilogy.
