A 1937 first state copy of Tolkien’s 'The Hobbit' that sold for £35,000 at Forum Auctions.
Just opened at the Bodleian in Oxford is Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth, billed as ‘a once-in-a-generation’ exhibition of manuscripts, artworks, letters, artefacts, etc, focused on the writer’s life and work.
The exhibition runs until the end of October and displays include Tolkien’s own draft jacket designs for The Hobbit and other works, borrowed from Marquette University in Wisconsin, which acquired them from the author in the 1950s.
As reported in ATG No 2345, the best-seller at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale on May 31 was, at £110,000, one of the typescripts of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago that found their way to the West in the 1950s.
