“THE MOST INFLUENTIAL FANTASY NOVEL EVER WRITTEN”: WONDERFULLY BOUND FIRST EDITIONS OF ALL THREE VOLUMES OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS

TOLKIEN, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers. The Return of the King. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954-55. Three volumes. Octavo, modern full pictorial black morocco gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Housed in custom full morocco gilt clamshell box.

First editions of all three volumes of Tolkien’s tour de force: his richly imagined, elegantly crafted, wildly popular vision of the battle for the fate of Middle-Earth, most handsomely bound in full morocco, gilt-decorated with iconography from the novel.

"The most influential fantasy novel ever written" (Clute & Grant, 951). Although immediately occasioned by his publisher's request for a sequel to The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien's incomparable epic draws on lore, legends and languages he had been creating since World War I. Published in three volumes for practical reasons (Tolkien always considered it a single novel), it is "one of [the 20th] century's lasting contributions to that borderland of literature between youth and age… [and] to that select list of books which continue through the ages to be read by children and adults with almost equal pleasure" (Eyre, 134-35). "Of all popular bestsellers, The Lord of the Rings is the one most likely to be read over and over again" (Shippey, Tolkien: Author of the Century, 306). Large folding maps, printed in black and red, at rear of each volume. Return of the King in in Hammond's revised second state of the first printing, with gathering mark "4" and sagging type on page 49. These copies uniformly and distinctively bound in full pictorial morocco-gilt. The front boards depict Tolkien's Ring and Eye of Sauron designs, as seen on the original dust jackets, with each volume's title and Tolkien's name in Tengwar, one of the Elvish alphabets the author created. The rear boards bear Tolkien's stylized monogram. When viewed together, the spines show the Gates of Moria, after the line drawing in Fellowship (page 319). The custom clamshell box replicates the bindings' front boards and spines but reproduces, on the rear, the fiery letters on the Ring that preserve the ancient rhyme, "One Ring to rule them all…" (Fellowship, page 59). Hammond & Anderson A5a. Fantasy and Horror 5-289. Pringle, Modern Fantasy, 60-61. Fantasy 100 Best, 161-62.

Light foxing to maps, only occasionally to text. Bindings striking and fine with all gilt bright. A very nearly fine copy, most desirable in a creative and expertly crafted morocco-gilt binding.