Rare first edition of ‘The Hobbit' sells for £43,000 at UK auction
The book, purchased by a UK private collector, is one of only 1,500 original copies printed in 1937.
Auctioneum, the auction house handling the sale, stated that just a few hundred of these first editions are believed to survive today.
Bidders worldwide pushed the final price to over four times the auction house's initial estimate.
'It's a wonderful result, for a very special book,' said Auctioneum rare books specialist Caitlin Riley.
The surviving copies from the first print run are now among the most coveted items in modern literature, according to Auctioneum.
The book was found during a routine house clearance after the owner's passing, hidden in an ordinary bookcase.
'Nobody knew it was there,' Riley remarked.
'It was just a run-of-the-mill bookcase,' she added.
Riley immediately recognised it as an early edition of 'The Hobbit' but was stunned to confirm it was a genuine first edition.
'I couldn't believe my eyes,' she said, describing it as an 'unimaginably rare find'.
The copy features Tolkien's original black-and-white illustrations and is bound in light green cloth.
It belonged to botanist Hubert Priestley, whose family library preserved the book for decades.
Auctioneum suggested Priestley and Tolkien likely knew each other through mutual connections at the University of Oxford.
Both corresponded with author C.S. Lewis, another Oxford contemporary.
'The Hobbit' has sold over 100 million copies globally and inspired the 'Lord of the Rings' series.
The books were later adapted into a blockbuster film franchise in the 2000s.
A first edition with Tolkien's handwritten Elvish note previously sold for £137,000 at Sotheby's in 2015. - AFP
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