Allen & Unwin 1954 near fine book and jacket. Jacket whole, unrestored,no repairs, no paper loss to spine ends, small tear with paper loss lower back cover, spine slightly darkened. Pages clean and tight, no lean
Overall, as good as you will likely find of this now rare book. The second editions Hobbits have all but disappeared, in any condition. The first ten have most of the key textual changes to align it with the Lord of the Rings which is advertised on the rear flap.
What is little known of this printing is the dust jacket rear flap first promotes The Fellowship of the Ring as “In preparation” for the first time. 1951 not, 1955 as “Available” . An important historical addition to any serious collection. It also makes a nice companion year book to the 1954 First The Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit editions:
The 1951 1st printing of the 2nd edition is very important as many text changes were made to aligned it as the prequel to the upcoming Lord of the Rings. Further changes were made to each printing up the 1966 3rd edition.
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.
The Hobbit First edition: 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’
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