2025-08-09 12:00
publication
2025-08-09 12:00
The first edition of the classic fantasy novel “Hobbit” by Jrr Tolkien was sold in Great Britain at auction for 43,000 pounds – said the portal of the British daily Guardian.
The book sold on Wednesday for a sum of four times exceeding the original estimates of the auctioneum auction house. It was bought by a private collector from Great Britain.
“Hobbit” appeared for the first time in 1937 in a circulation of only 1,500 copies. According to Auctioneum, only several hundred copies of this edition have survived.
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The book, published in a light green setting and illustrated by Tolkien, was found in the library of the family of the famous botanist Hubert Priestley, older brother of the researcher Antarctica, Sir Raymond Edward Priestley. Auctioneum thinks that Priestley could personally know the author of “Hobbit” because they both corresponded to CS Lewis, the author of another fantasy cycle “Stories from Narnia”.
In 2015, a different copy of the first edition, containing Tolkien's handwritten note in the language of the elves, was sold at auction for 137,000 pounds.
Since the first edition, over 100 million copies of “Hobbit” have been sold – “Guardian” (PAP) said
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