The Hobbit was first published on September 21, 1937. The book was aimed at children, although it came to be enjoyed by readers of all ages across many generations. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (to give it its full title) charts the quest of Bilbo Baggins, along with a troop of dwarfs, to win a share of treasure guarded by a fearsome dragon called Smaug. On the journey, Bilbo acquires the ‘one ring’ of immense power, which acts as a prelude into the epic Lord of The Rings trilogy of books. The story of The Hobbit has infused into many parts of popular culture, from fantasy games, to songs; and from poems to movie versions.
The Hobbit was written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Tolkein’s knowledge of ancient languages was the basis to his use of self-invented archaic sounding languages in his Middle Earth books, including ‘Elvish.’ J. R. R. Tolkien constructed many Elvish languages, for different tribes of elves and developed an entire linguistic history.
Elvish partly explains why the first edition of The Hobbit has fetched such a high price at auction. With this edition, The Times of India reports, Tolkien gave the book as a gift to to a Katherine “Kitty” Kilbride, who one of his students at Leeds University in the 1920s. In the book, Tolkein has written a dedication and a verse in Elvish. The verse is taken from from Tolkien’s work The Lost Road, which forms part of his 12-volume History of his fictional Middle Earth.
The selling price of $210,000 at Sotheby’s in London broke the expected price of $110,000. It also surpassed the previous record for a first-edition of The Hobbit, which was $100,000.
