{"id":98401,"date":"2015-06-16T17:30:07","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T22:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=98401"},"modified":"2015-06-16T17:30:07","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T22:30:07","slug":"first-edition-of-the-hobbit-sells-at-auction-for-137000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2015\/06\/16\/98401-first-edition-of-the-hobbit-sells-at-auction-for-137000\/","title":{"rendered":"First edition of The Hobbit sells at auction for \u00a3137,000"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/hobbit1rst.jpg\" class=\"no-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-98402 no-lazyload\" src=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/hobbit1rst-300x202.jpg\" alt=\"hobbit1rst\" width=\"300\" height=\"202\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/hobbit1rst-300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/hobbit1rst.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>If you happened to have some spare pocket change at a recent Sotheby&#8217;s auction, you could have picked up a first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien&#8217;s <em>The Hobbit<\/em> for a mere \u00a3 137,000, or the equivalent of about $214, 370 U.S. dollars at today&#8217;s exchange rate. This first edition, which more than doubled the record for sales of <em>The Hobbit<\/em> book, was a very special one indeed: it included an inscription by the author in Old English to a former student, Katherine Kilbride.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Tolkien inscribed only a \u201chandful\u201d of presentation copies of The Hobbit on its publication, said Sotheby\u2019s, with CS Lewis also a recipient. Kilbride\u2019s 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\u2019s The Lost Road. This time-travel story, in which the world of N\u00famenor and Middle-earth were linked with the legends of many other times and peoples, was abandoned by the author incomplete.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read the full story, and see if you can decipher the inscription, at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2015\/jun\/05\/hobbit-first-edition-with-jrr-tolkiens-inscription-doubles-sales-record\" target=\"_blank\">theguardian.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you happened to have some spare pocket change at a recent Sotheby&#8217;s auction, you could have picked&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":98402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[84,7,153,148,152],"tags":[792,2791,2855,2790],"class_list":["post-98401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-merchandise-collectibles","category-hobbit-book","category-tolkien-life","category-hobbit","category-tolkien","tag-jrr-tolkien","tag-sothebys","tag-hobbit","tag-the-hobbit-first-edition"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/hobbit1rst.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-pB7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98404,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98401\/revisions\/98404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}