Rare 1937 first edition of Tolkien’s The Hobbit found in Bristol sells for £43,000

Representative Image of an old leather-bound copy of The Hobbit found in a dusty cabinet among reference books and children’s titles (AI-generated image) A rare first-edition copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was discovered during a house clearance in Bristol and sold for £43,000 at auction in August 2025. The book, one of 1,500 copies printed in September 1937, had been overlooked among other titles in a private collection. Auctioneum, the auction house that identified the volume, had estimated it would sell for between £10,000 and £12,000. Competitive bidding pushed the hammer price to about 3.6 times the upper estimate and 4.3 times the lower one. The copy had no dust jacket, making the result notable in the rare-book market. Auctioneum linked the book’s provenance to botanist Hubert Priestley and suggested a possible connection between the Priestley family and Tolkien through Oxford circles. The precise nature of that connection remains unclear.How a rare Hobbit first edition was discovered during a Bristol house clearanceThe discovery came during a routine house clearance after the property’s owner had died. According to the specialist antiques publication Antiques Trade Gaz...