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Hobbit 1st edition fetches $66,000 at auction

July 15, 2002 at 13:17:55

A first edition copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, signed by the author for his aunt, was recently sold at auction for $66,000.

Tolkien's book was sold at the esteemed Sotheby's auction house in London, England for $66,630, according to news wire services. A first edition of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter was sold for $64,780. A first edition copy of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, signed by author J.K. Rowling, was sold for $16,660.

Tolkien has been acclaimed as the most popular author of the 20th Century in numerous polls in which hundreds of thousands of reader opinions have been solicited. He ranks highly in a perenniel Internet poll for Best Fantasy Author as wall.

Tolkien is credited by many as being the most influential modern fantasy author, spawning a generation of lookalike fantasy adventures and strongly infuencing fantasy role-playing game stereotypes with his Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Orcs.

The Hobbit began as a curious sentence Tolkien scrawled on the back of a blank test paper in 1925. He went on to construct a story about an imaginary creature, Mr. Baggins, who accompanied a group of Dwarves on a journey to recover a treasure hoard which the evil dragon Smaug had stolen from them.

The story, contrived to amuse Tolkien's children, was put into manuscript form in the early 1930s. Eventually, it reached the hands of an employee for George Allen & Unwin, who offered to publish the book. It became an instant best-seller and won international recognition. George Allen & Unwin asked Tolkien to write a sequel to the book in December 1937, only months after it had been published. Tolkien began working on what would become The Lord of the Rings that same month. But the sequel would not see publication until 1954.

A second edition of The Hobbit, prepared in anticipation of the sequel and based on comments Tolkien supplied to the publisher, appeared in 1950. Tolkien himself prepared a third edition in response to an unauthorized American paperback edition published by ACE Books in 1965. At that time, Tolkien regretted that his schedule would not permit him to rewrite the book completely.

The Lord of the Rings also underwent revision in 1965 and 1966. The 1965/6 editions of these books are the most widely distributed texts in the English-speaking world.

The Hobbit has been adapted for stage, radio, film, and television around the world. Puppets of all sizes and actors of all ages, both amateur and professional, have appeared in the various adaptations. The Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio in 1956 and again in the 1970s. Despite an unhappy experience with Forrest J. Ackerman in the 1950s, Tolkien sold the film and merchandising rights to both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1965. Saul Zaentz acquired the rights in the 1970s, and he set up Tolkien Enterprises as a division of The Saul Zaentz Company to administer the rights.

A persistent rumor is circulating that a film adaptation of "The Hobbit" may be procuced after Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema release "The Return of the King" in 2003, the third of three movies based on The Lord of the Rings. Portions of the Hobbit story were filmed as background material for the Jackson film trilogy.