The Hobbit or There and Back Again

Third printing (First thus). 8vo. 310pp. Publisher's yellow cloth, lettered in black to spine. Of the 4,500 copies of the third impression printed by Unwin Brothers, 3,000 sets of sheets were sold to Foyles. Issued under their Children's Book Club imprint these were not reprinted. The remainder sheets comprised the third printing of the Allen & Unwin edition. 8 b/w illus. only. Thror's Map and the Map of Wilderland are not pasted on the endpapers. Includes the original version of the encounter with Gollum.

Backstrip sunned with a tiny black spot, a third of the way up, lettering dull, upper board lightly soiled, faint waterstain to lower board, half an inch closed tear to edgefold of lower spine, top edge lightly dusted, else an internally fresh copy of this fairly fragile wartime production.

[Wayne G. Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography, (pp. 15–16)]