The Tolkien Shop

George Allen & Unwin, 1957 set wihout the dustjackets.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the first edition, seventh printing from 1957. The red cloth is rubbed to the edges and corners. Pages clean and bright. Fold-out map in the back in fine condition. Binding thight.

The Two Towers is the first edition, fifth impression form 1957. The red cloth is in a fine condition, with a square fading shadow on the front and a small stain on the spine. The paper is in excellent, unfaded condition. Binding thight. Small owner's stamp on first fly-leaf.

The Return of the King is the first edition, third impression from January 1957. The red cloth is in fine condition, with a square fading shadow on the front and slight fadiing to the spine. The paper is in excellent, unfaded condition. Binding thight. Small owner's stamp on the first fly-leaf. Fold-out map in the back in fine condition.*

HarperCollins, 2011. 1st edition. Limited collector's edition. Hardback (no dustjacket issued) in slipcase. Illustrated. Limited to 500 numbered copies. Each signed by the artist.

This brand new full-colour art book reveals in sumptuous detail more than 100 paintings based on The Lord of the Rings by acclaimed Dutch artist, Cor Blok, many of which appear here for the first time.

Fifty years ago, shortly after The Lord of the Rings was first published, Cor Blok read the work and was completely captivated by its invention and epic storytelling. The breadth of imagination and powerful imagery inspired the young Dutch artist, and this spark of enthusiasm, coupled with his desire to create art that resembled a historical artefact in its own right, led to the creation of more than 100 paintings.

Following an exhibition at the Hague in 1961, JRR Tolkien’s publisher, Rayner Unwin, sent him five pictures. Tolkien was so taken with them that he met and corresponded with the artist and even bought some paintings for himself.

The series bears comparison with the Bayeux Tapestry, in which each tells an epic and complex story in deceptively simple style, but beneath this simplicity lies a compelling and powerful language of form that becomes more effective as the sequence of paintings unfolds.

The full-colour paintings in this new book are presented in story order so that the reader can enjoy them as the artist intended. They are accompanied by extracts from The Lord of the Rings and the artist also provides an extensive introduction illuminating the creation of the series and notes to accompany some of the major compositions. Many of the paintings appear for the very first time.

Readers will find Cor Blok's work refreshing, provocative, charming and wholly memorable – the bold and expressive style that he created stands as a unique achievement in the history of fantasy illustration. Rarely has an artist captured the essence of a writer's work in such singular fashion; the author found much to admire in Cor Blok’s work, and what higher accolade is there?*

Fellowship of the Ring:

A true very rare first edition/ first impression with only 3,000copies printed in July 1954. Original red boards and unrestored. The spine is faded but gold embossed print still visible. There are as expected a few marks on the boards and spine particularly on the corners but overall boards are fairly flat.

The pages within are generally clean with no inscriptions or tears and the map at the rear is very bright and I suspect hardly opened. The title page has the ‘1954’date, the map has the red dot near to ‘Umbar’ and all other first impression points noted.  There is some foxing to first and last blank pages and the edges of last text page but remainder are clear, odd shallow corner creases.    

The Two Towers:

The second true first edition/ first impression with only 3,250 copies printed in 1954. Original red boards and once again totally unrestored. The spine is faded and marked/stained and there are a number of marks on the boards including some rubbing and splits to top and bottom of spine.  

Inside there is a faint Australia? book store stamp to front board (15x40mm) and some foxing throughout, more prominent on first blank pages and towards the rear of the book although the map appears unmarked and very clean and fresh.  The pages within are otherwise generally clean with no inscriptions or tears and just a small pen mark on last page. The title page has the ‘1954’date.    

The Return of the King

The final part is also a first edition/ first impression with only 7,000copies printed in October 1955. This has the best original red boards and like the others is totally unrestored. The spine is lightly faded but gold lettering still visible. Boards clean with minor marks and creased spine edges.  

The pages within are generally clean with no inscriptions foxing or tears and the map at the rear is very bright and I suspect hardly opened. The title page has the ‘1955’date and all other first impression points noted including on page 49 the number 4 and usual dropped text.  There is some foxing to first and last blank pages and the edges of last text page but remainder are clear.

All the books have quality facsimile jackets in a protective removable cover and these are included in sale.*

Published by the Dutch Tolkien Society  with twelve articles and poems (all in English). Articles include "The ancestors of the Hobbits, strange creatures in English folklore" by Tom Shippey, "Tolkien versus Wagner" by Renée Vink, "An Unexpected Party" by Alex Lewis, "Music in Middle-earth" by Heidi Steimel, "The right way to speak to dragons" by Christian Weichmann, "Goths and Huns" by Jessica Yates and others. Bound in clear plastic cover.*

River Records. Re-release on a region free dvd of the Rankin and Bass cartoonmovie of The Hobbit from 1978.*

Homo floresiensis ("Flores Man", nicknamed "hobbit" and "Flo") is a possible species, now extinct, in the genus Homo. The remains were discovered in 2003 on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Partial skeletons of nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete cranium (skull).^[1][2] These remains have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they represent a species distinct from modern humans, and the progress of this scientific controversy has been closely followed by the news media at large. This hominin is remarkable for its small body and brain and for its survival until relatively recent times (possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago).^[3] Recovered alongside the skeletal remains were stone tools from archaeological horizons ranging from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago.

Exact replica in polystone of the scull. Handpainted.*

Walking Tree, 2011. 1st edition. Paperback. Cover by the author.

Traditionally, the "Inklings" C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams have been seen as separate from the literature of their time: as innovative in an idiosyncratic way at best, and as reactionary and in deliberate opposition to contemporary progressive writing at worst. Recent years have seen a gradual change in this view, but few studies to date have attempted to read Lewis, Tolkien and Williams alongside their most famous contemporaries: the literary modernists.

This monograph represents the first full-length study to draw explicit and indepth comparisons between the Inklings and writers such as T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and David Jones among others. An examination of both thematic and structural concerns reveals a number of shared issues that go beyond mere responses to the cataclysmic events of the first half of the twentieth century. Myth as theme and structuring device, world-building as an attempt to render the author’s subjective reality objective and authoritative, writing as an (unsuccessful) attempt to overcome the nightmare of history, and language as both the paradoxical means of creation and the reason creation must fail: these concerns and tensions are central to the works of both Inklings and modernists. In establishing that the works of Lewis, Tolkien and Williams contain aspects that can be termed “modernist”, this study also hopes to show that certain aspects of modernism might very well be termed "fantastic". *

A brand new audio edition of the children’s story, written and illustrated by the author of The Hobbit and Letters from father Christmas, read by Sir Derek Jacobi. Read in full. Length: 43 mintues.*

HarperCollins, 2011. 1st edition thus. Hardback. Illustrated.

The first ever trade edition of Tolkien’s illustrated tale about the eccentric Mr Bliss, a man notable for his immensely tall hats and for the girabbit in his garden, whose whimsical decision to buy a motor car quickly becomes a catalogue of disasters.

Professor J.R.R. Tolkien invented and illustrated the book of Mr Bliss’s adventures for his own children when they were very young. The book was handwritten with lots of detailed and uproarious colour pictures.

This is a complete and highly imaginative tale of eccentricity. Mr Bliss, a man notable for his immensely tall hats and for the girabbit in his garden, takes the whimsical decision to buy a motor car. But his first drive to visit friends quickly becomes a catalogue of disasters. Some of these could be blamed on Mr Bliss’s style of driving, but even he could not anticipate being hijacked by three bears. As for what happened next – the readers, whether young or old, will want to discover for themselves.

Redesigned using new archival scans of Tolkien’s original drawings, MR BLISS is presented for the first time in a conventional trade format.*

The History Press, 2011. 1st editon. Illustrated with photo's. Paperback.

J.R.R. Tolkien's experiences of the Battle of the Somme forever imprinted on his mind, and became a dramatic source of inspiration for The Lord of the Rings. This absorbing book charts Tolkien's life from 1914 to 1918, using old postcards, maps and photographs to paint a picture of the places and times that relate to one of the leading authors of the twentieth century. Tolkien joined the army in 1915 and trained in Bedford and Brocton Camp on Cannock Chase while his wife lived in the village of Great Haywood, close to the camp. A number of the places in and around Great Haywood were destined to appear in his later works. In 1916 Tolkien learnt of the death of two of his school friends in the bloody Battle of the Somme. He contracted Trench Fever in late October 1916 and returned to Birmingham, his hometown, by hospital ship and train. The final part of the book covers his time in England, an era in which he was blighted by illness.*

Lehigh University Press, 2011. 1st edition as paperback. Illustrated.

In "Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion", Douglas C. Kane reveals a tapestry woven by Christopher Tolkien from different portions of his father's work that is often quite mind-boggling, with inserts that seemed initially to have been editorial inventions shown to have come from some remote portion of Tolkien's vast body of work. He demonstrates how material that was written over the course of more than thirty years was merged together to create a single, coherent text. He also makes a frank appraisal of the material omitted by Christopher Tolkien (and in a couple of egregious cases the material invented by him) and how these omissions and insertions may have distorted his father's vision of what he considered - even more then "The Lord of the Rings" - to be his most important work. It is a fascinating portrait of a unique collaboration that reached beyond the grave.*