Loosely inserted in the copy pictured above right, is a letter, dated September 22 (the day following publication) in which he presents “my little book [which] arrived yesterday” and tells her “I have bought another secondhand car... partly with money already brought in by The Hobbit.
Aunt Jane was a woman who had a great influence on his life and he developed a close relationship when he went to stay with her following the death of his father and the illness of his mother. In the 1920s, Worcestershire locals referred to Aunt Jane’s farm as Bag End, a name he later used for Bilbo’s home, and it was Aunt Jane who asked him for “a small book with Tom Bombadil at the heart”. The result was The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, published the following year, just a few months before her death.
There was in fact a copy of this work in the Sotheby’s sale, which sold at £3000 to a collector, but this 1962 first, though a presentation copy, was not one given to Aunt Jane. It was inscribed to an unknown recipient, “J.R.R. Tolkien. Love & Memories of Miramar”, a reference to the Bournemouth hotel at which he and Edith had spent a number of their holidays.
The Hobbit reaches £40,000 at Sotheby's.
Last summer Sotheby’s took a bid of £36,000 on a copy of the 1937 first edition of The Hobbit inscribed in October of that year to Tolkien’s Aunt Jane; this summer they raised £40,000 for a copy that he had inscribed at the time of publication.
