First edition, 4th impression. 1946 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Allen, London

The last impression to be considered a first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic work, The Hobbit, with its rare dust jacket; this is the 1946 4th impression. The dust jacket inner flap (front) states, "fourth impression", and the copyright page lists four printings (another point of verification is the "Book Production War Economy Standard").

These first editions are slightly different than newer editions, as Tolkien needed to adjust the work as The Lord of the Rings took shape. The story doesn't flow as well into the later novels.

Also, the first two impressions had color illustrations, but the war-time impressions (1942 and 1946) changed all but the frontis to black and white illustrations. The illustrations include: the frontis, The Trolls, Misty Mountains, Beorn's Hall, The Elven King's Gate, Lake Town, The Front Gate and The Hall at Bag End (names abbreviated).

Bibliographic Details -

Worldcat OCLC catalogue number 1154033679; oddly, no copies recorded in the world's libraries (and it's the only record OCLC brings up for "1946 Hobbit").

Physical Attributes -

Measures approx. 19 x 13 x 2 cm. Gatherings of eight (octavo). Decorative dust cover. Cloth publisher's binding. Decorative (maps) endpapers. Illustrated with eight illustrations (one is a color plate, the frontis).

Pages - First two blank leaves are included in the pagination as 1-4, the 1/2 title leaf is 5/6, the frontis is not in the collation as it's a plate, the title page leaf is 7/8, the chapters leaf is 9/10 and Chapter One recto, although unpaginated, is 11; the same leaf's verso is labelled "12" (the 6th leaf of the A gathering). Book is then paged 12 to 310. Last leaf unpaginated, recto is a colophon of Allen (with printer's mark), verso is an ad for "Wild Animal Books".

Collation - A-T8, U4

The book collates complete, all pages are present.

Condition -

See pictures. Unrestored dust jacket with significant wear (edges have chips and tears), toning (more near edges), flaps dog-eared, price clipped from flap, “Chris” written on the front, 2.50 written on the front flap, and chips to top and bottom of spine. Dust jacket now protected in a mylar jacket.

Cloth binding a little sunned and toned, with light wear around edges of boards and spine joints.

Top-edge of text block slightly darkened with dust; several very light fox spots along fore-edge. FEP (free front endpaper) and first leaves with a corner crease from dog-earing the corner (concludes at leaf that starts Chapter 1). Pastedown/FEP with a few small marks. Text block is lightly toned throughout (likely due to the quality of war-time paper).

Tiny (.5 cm) tear in fore-edge of frontis.

A few small and light fox spots to title page.

Light mark at fore-edge of page 30.

Small 1 cm chip at bottom edge of leaf F2 (pages 83/84).

Thumb at bottom edge of page 125.

Leaf P4 (pages 231/232) with a 4” tear from top-edge.

Faint mark at top-edge margin of 260.

Slightest crease to last leaf, “Overleaf particulars of publications of similar interest…”.

For a children’s book, the interior is remarkably clean and without annotations. The dust jacket/cloth binding received a little wear, wherever it was stored, but overall, I’d consider this a pleasing example and am happy to have it in my library until the next caretaker takes possession.