The Hobbit; or, There and Back Again
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938. Very Good. Item #50216
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938. First American Edition, First Printing in the Second State with publisher's device, and not the bowing hobbit, at title page. Octavo; bound in tan cloth stamped in blue and red; 310pp. Map of Wilderland and Thror's map endpapers printed in red; half title; color frontispiece and twelve plates, three of which are in color, complete. Lacks dust jacket. Boards show light edgewear and corners slightly bumped; general staining and smudging; binding sound; contemporary gift inscriptions to preliminaries; frontispiece attached but separated along lower quarter; pages else unmarked; a Very Good copy.
A hugely important and beloved work of fantasy and children's literature, author Jon Michaud called The Hobbit "a better and more satisfying read than its gargantuan successor," in The New Yorker in 2012. He further notes it had the right proportion of dwarves to hobbits, no Tom Bombadil, and of course a great dragon sitting on a pile of gold... "For all the magnificent creatures in the 'Rings' trilogy, there is no beast as grand and imposing as Smaug... Tolkien, who had a way with names, never came up with a better one... Smaug uses guile as well as fire in dealing with his enemies and it is ultimately a very human character flaw—arrogance—that undoes him."
Hammond & Anderson A3b2
Jon Michaud, "'The Hobbit': One Book to Rule Them All." The New Yorker: December 6, 2012 .
Price: $5,000.00