FS - The Hobbit - 1938 Houghton-Mifflin First American Edi..

For Sale

1938 Houghton-Mifflin first edition of the book with the bowing hobbit
on the cover and on the title page. The book is in good shape but
doesn't have the dust jacket. There are only three "issues" that I
can find with the book. First, there is an inscription in pen on the
front map. Second, the hobbit on the title page has been partially
colored in with blue pen. Lastly, binding on page 309 has partially
started to separate.

"The first American edition of The Hobbit is perhaps the most
beautifully designed of any edition. Houghton Mifflin chose to print
it in a larger size and on heavier stock than Allen & Unwin's first
edition, and they chose to include four color plates of Tolkien's
original artwork. Margins are ample and the typesetting well crafted
for readability. The tan cloth cover is printed in blue for lettering
and red for the bowing hobbit emblem on the front and the dwarf's hood
emblem on the spine. Regrettably, however, they chose to print the
end-paper maps in red only, instead of the black and red chosen by
Allen & Unwin. They also mistakenly put the Wilderland map in front
and the Lonely Mountain map in back, the reverse of the description in
the text. Chapter VII (Out of the Frying Pan) is incorrectly
identified as 'Chapter VI'.

The dust jacket on the first edition is exceedingly rare. It is a
medium blue field all around. The front announces the title in white,
beneath which appears, in color and framed in red, Tolkien's
illustration of Hobbiton. The reverse displays Tolkien's illustration
of Smaug on his trove, also in color.

There are three 'states' of the first American printing. The earliest
shows on the title page the same bowing hobbit emblem visible on the
cover. At some point, however, the boots the hobbit wears in the
emblem were acknowledged to conflict with the text's description of a
bare-footed hobbit, so the publisher replaced the emblem with the
rather less appealing seated flautist. Whether one calls this
development a variant state or a second printing is a distinction of
taste. The text did not change. The third state corrects the Chapter
VII heading but is otherwise identical to the second.

All states of the first edition measure 15.0 x 21.0 cm. They contain
310 numbered pages."

Please contact me at ex_buckwheat_sententia at hotmail.com if you have
any questions or to discuss pricing.