The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
1987 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition
Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston
ISBN: 0395177111*
Hardcover; issued in a slipcase
xvi, 320 pp.
Illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien
Hammond Page Ref.: pp. 62-63
Tolkien Collector Ref.: Issue no. 13, pp. 21-22
Notes
Typeset as for the Houghton Mifflin 1973 Collector’s Edition but with a new Foreword (reset from the Unwin Hyman 1987 50th Anniversary Edition) by Christopher Tolkien reproducing two pages from the manuscript of The Hobbit, together with six further illustrations and several extracts from letters written by J.R.R. Tolkien.
1st Printing: October 26, 1987 – 15,000 copies
2nd Printing: 1991
There are two states of the 1st Printing, priority as follows:
1. Copyright page has ‘Book-of-the-Month Records’ advertisement (although this is not a Book Club Edition). Title page has slightly lighter gold ink used. Green mottled page edges.
2. Copyright page has an ‘H’ at the bottom. Title page (a cancel leaf) has slightly darker gold ink used. Green mottled page edges.
The 1st Printing was also issued (in a much greater quantity) as a Book Club Edition with four variants. All have unstained page edges with top edge stained orange, a red or blind stamp on the lower right of the back cover (trade editions have no stamp) and a gutter code printed on the last page (the following codes have been seen: ‘HB 9 S‘ & ‘HB 5 V‘). Differences are as follows (priority given to variants 1 and 2 due to them having identical copyright pages as the first state trade edition):
1. 3mm red stamp on back cover (stamp is farther from sides of book than variant 2). Copyright page identical to trade edition state one.
2. 4mm red stamp on back cover (stamp is closer to sides of book than variant 1). Copyright page identical to trade edition state one.
3. 3mm blind stamp on back cover. Copyright page has a rule above the BOMC advertisement.
4. 4mm blind stamp on back cover. Copyright page has no rule or advertisement.
The 2nd Printing can be discerned by its gold/orange mottled page edges and its tan/orange endpapers**. It seems that only a small amount of 2nd Printings were produced and released for sale.
An 85 copy survey of this edition produced the following ratio of availability, 1st Printing to Book Club Edition to 2nd Printing: 6 to 97 to 3.
The runes on the front cover read: ‘THE HOBBIT OR THERE AND BACK AGAIN BEING THE RECORD OF A YEARS JOURNEY OF BILBO BAGGINS COMPILED FROM HIS MEMOIRS’. The runes on the spine of the book read: ‘THE HOBBIT BY JRR TOLKIEN’.
RRP: $24.95.
The slipcase can be seen here.
*This ISBN is shared with the 1973 Collector’s Edition and the 1988 Quality Paperback Book Club Edition. Another ISBN (0395454026 / 9780395454022) has also been seen used for this edition for reasons presently unknown. It has been suggested that it may derive from a trade edition though this has not been seen: Houghton Mifflin 1987 50th Anniversary Edition.
**One copy of the 2nd Printing has been seen with an unstained fore edge (top and bottom edge are stained as normal).
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