A pristine copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit has sold at auction for a record £137,000 (just over $213,000 US), more than double the record for the previous record, set in 2008.
One reason for the high price? Tolkien signed the copy for Katherine Kilbride, a student of Tolkien’s in the 1920s.
Tolkien inscribed only a “handful” of presentation copies of The Hobbit on its publication, said Sotheby’s, with CS Lewis also a recipient. Kilbride’s includes an inscription by the author in Old English, identified by John D Rateliff, author of The History of The Hobbit, as an extract from Tolkien’s The Lost Road. This time-travel story, in which the world of Númenor and Middle-earth were linked with the legends of many other times and peoples, was abandoned by the author incomplete.
Color us very, very jealous.
via The Guardian.
