Celebrating the Hobbit
On 21 September, 1937, one of the most celebrated and collectible
books in modern literature was published in London. The brain child
of a bored college professor, who while in the midst of marking
papers, jotted the words “In a hole in the ground there lived a
hobbit” onto a blank paper. It was at that point that the seed for a
classic was planted.
The Hobbit’s
initial UK release through Allen & Unwin in 1937 was a mere 1,500
copies. Receiving enthusiastic reviews, it sold out in a couple of
months prompting subsequent printings and a North American release
through Houghton Mifflin.
As popularity grew, publishers and fans alike began urging
Tolkien to write a second book. As he began writing, it wasn’t long before Tolkien realized the need to revise the text of
The Hobbit
so it would properly integrate into a sequel. This also came at a time
when Tolkien was in an ongoing piracy battle with US publishers, and
editing the text enabled him to copyright the book and end the piracy.
The revised section occurs where Bilbo plays a riddle game with
Gollum. In the original Gollum bets his ring in a game of chance,
but this is reworked in later editions in order to reflect Tolkien’s
new concept of the One Ring and its powerful hold on the poor
creature. Tolkien explained the differing stories between editions by
stating that he was simply the translator of the supposedly historic
Red Book of Westmarch and had used Bilbo's original story in the first
printings, but later retranslated the work with the "true story"
recorded by Frodo.
While
The Hobbit gained enough popularity to prompt the publishing of
Lord of the Rings, it did not achieve its full audience until the 1960s when publishers printed a huge reissue of affordable
Hobbit
copies in the US. The timing of the release was perfect as it
coincided with a cultural revolution that embraced many of the social
themes in the works.
Another factor in the success of the novel was adult acceptance
of fantasy, where as previously the genre had been mostly regarded as
children’s entertainment. Tolkien’s acute attention to detail when
creating the Middle Earth universe was the key to this success. “He
used his knowledge as a scholar and a linguist to create an entire
mythology for his work that was grounded in existing mythology and real
languages,” explains Dan Gregory of
Between the Covers Bookshop.
“This set a new, and perhaps unsurpassed standard for creating a
fully-fledged fantasy world full of not just a single culture, but
multiple cultures, languages, and histories all intertwined. You can
see the influence in several other successful series, such as
Dune and
Dragon Riders.” Had Tolkien not been there to pave the way authors such as
Terry Brooks,
CS Lewis or even
JK Rowling and her beloved
Harry Potter may never have achieved the same mass appeal.
Gregory continues, explaining that this new found mass appeal
began to drive the collectors market for early editions. “The readers
of the 1960s became the collectors of the 1970s and the price of
early editions started to rise along with the books popularity, and
have been continuing to rise ever since.” In fact a first edition
copy of
The Hobbit was the most expensive book ever sold on
AbeBooks. Selling in December of 2005 for $65,000, and that isn’t
even considered the ceiling for what firsts can sell for. Gregory
recounts of one bookseller who purchased a first edition
Hobbit
to keep as a nest egg, eventually selling it several years later.
“The sale put them well on their way to a home they were buying, and
this was prior to the release of the latest film adaptations.”
Despite the fact that Tolkien taught for many years at Oxford University, and was not a recluse like
Thomas Pynchon or
Cormac McCarthy,
signed material is relatively uncommon on the market, particularly
with respect to demand. According to Gregory “A Tolkien signature in
one of his books usually doubles or triples the value. In the case of
reprint editions, the presence of a signature can affect the price
significantly more. (Interestingly enough Tolkien’s close friend C.S.
Lewis, who was also a professor, shared his distaste for signings.)
It is not only true first editions that are sought after by
collectors. Various reprints of Tolkien’s works have collectible value,
either because he made textual changes, because they contain new
artwork appreciated by fans, because the true first editions are so
expensive, or simply because Tolkien collectors are, well, really into
Tolkien. So much so that the academic works he produced as a
linguistics professor (pre-Middle Earth writing) are also collected by
his fiction fans simply because he wrote them).
Now over seven decades after John Ronald Reuel Tolkien first let
readers into his Middle Earth world, we can take a look back at all
the adventures he created.
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