About this Item
Allen and Unwin 1946, 4th printing of the 1st Edition. War time paper book and jacket. Unrestored book and jacket, as good as they come for this now super scarce book. Book read once condition, a few light foxing spots in places. Jacket has a small paper loss to top right spine corner and several closed tears. Bright with no foxing. Outstanding original condition with no repairs and restoration. The early Hobbits used cheap paper for printing and wartime paper (recycled) is particularly delicate. You expect some minor amount of paper damage even with careful handling. I'm always concerned that flawless examples have extensive restoration even if not easily detectable and whether stated in their listings or not. As with all collectables: authentic, original real condition, warts and all, appreciate in value the most. Invest today! Note, this is not part of our first four Hobbits listing. It's a separate book for sale. We also have a 1st/1st for sale separately. The Hobbit First editions: Possibly uniquely in children's publishing, when The Hobbit came out in 1937, it contained quite a few things in that first edition that are much different to the book as we know it now in the second and later editions. Some of the changes were made because The Hobbit was being drawn into the larger stories in Middle earth and was becoming far more serious and darker. Firstly, in that first edition Bilbo at the Unexpected Party had sandwiches with tomatoes in them - tomatoes are of course from the New World, so Tolkien changed that in the second edition to pickles. Indeed, Tolkien spends quite some time in Letters explaining how potatoes might have existed, as well as tobacco - both New World varieties. In this case, Tolkien cleverly used 'taters' and 'pipeweed', thus obscuring the origin of the plants in question. The second and largest and most significant change was to the chapter 'Riddles in the Dark', where the last section of the chapter is completely different. Gollum, having lost the riddle game to the Hobbit, apologises profusely and offers to lead Bilbo out as compensation for the gift he would have given him (presumably the magic ring). He takes him so far along the tunnels, and then gets suspicious, and Bilbo then has to get past him - overhearing Gollum's talk to himself that reveals that the ring is capable of making him invisible. The Hobbit originally in 1937 had no link to Middle earth and the magic ring was just an equaliser device to give Bilbo some edge and extra powers to become 'heroic' when he was not brave or very resourceful. Since changing the text would have required all the metal plates for printing being recast anew, this was no small change.
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