The Hobbit or There and Back Again.

TOLKIEN, J.R.R.

Item Number: 45055

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938.

First American edition, first issue with bowing hobbit to the title page and all other issue points. Octavo, original cloth, map endpapers, illustrated by the author. In very good condition with some rubbing and wear to the cloth extremities, tiny name to the front free endpaper.

"In enchanted Middle-earth, a small, comfort-loving Hobbit is awakened from his slumbers by a visitor who tells of lost treasure. Before Bilbo Baggins returns home again, he journeys past wizards and elves, talkative trees and treaure-guarding dragons, all swirling in cosmic battle between good and evil. J.R.R. Tolkien's fully realized fantasy world won over generations of children, and dazzled adults with its deft interweaving of medieval legend and made-up languages, maps, and creatures. Tolkien legitimized the modern fantasy genre, and provided the 1960's counterculture with antiwar, back-to-Eden icons" (NYPL Books of the Century 199).