First Edition of The Hobbit Found in House Clearance to Auction

A true first edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit discovered hidden away during a routine house call in Bristol is estimated to fetch £12,000 at auction.

One of only 1,500 copies from the initial print run in September 1937, the original owner had passed away and Auctioneum was called in to assess the contents. The book was discovered in an old bookcase. 

"Nobody knew it was there," said Auctioneum book specialist, Caitlin Riley. "It was just a run-of-the-mill bookcase, containing the usual reading and reference books you’d expect to find. 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 book has 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 correspondence with fellow author C.S. Lewis, and it is likely that they knew each other. 

Lacking a dust wrapper, the copy is bound in light green cloth and features black and white illustrations by the author, the only printing to do so, as later editions colourised them. It has an estimate of £10,000 - £12,000 and goes under the hammer in Auctioneum's Books & Works On Paper auction on August 6.