The Hobbit

$150.00
By Moons Rare Books

6W J. R. R. Tolkien. Illustrated by Alan Lee. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.

Notes

The Hobbit follows Bilbo Baggins, a comfortable, completely unadventurous hobbit who is swept out of his cozy hole in the Shire by the wizard Gandalf and a company of thirteen dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield. Embarking on a perilous quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its vast treasure from the fearsome dragon Smaug, Bilbo journeys across a rich prehistoric landscape populated by elves, goblins, and trolls. Along the way, he undergoes a profound psychological transformation from a timid homebody into a courageous, resourceful leader—a development crystallized when he outwits the wretched creature Gollum in a high-stakes riddle contest and unknowingly gains possession of a magical, invisibility-granting ring. Written with a charming, conversational narrative voice that masterfully balances lighthearted humor with a haunting sense of ancient history, the novel effectively shattered the traditional moralistic conventions of children's literature, establishing the core archetypes, languages, and thematic foundations that would directly pave the way for its epic sequel, The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien (1892–1973), was a brilliant Oxford philologist and professor of Old English who viewed his fictional mythos as a vast linguistic playground. Rather than merely inventing a story and populating it with monsters, Tolkien spent decades meticulously constructing entire language families—most notably the elvish tongues of Quenya and Sindarin—and subsequently built the history, geography, and cultures of Middle-earth simply to give his invented words a living context. Written over a grueling twelve-year period that spanned the dark anxieties of World War II, the work was deeply colored by Tolkien’s own traumatic combat experiences during the Battle of the Somme, a reality that infused his prose with a haunting sense of historical grief and a poignant melancholy for a fading world.

Commissioned by HarperCollins to celebrate the centenary of Tolkien's birth, the landmark 1992 Centenary Edition showcases Alan Lee’s magnificent suite of 50 watercolor plates, marking a deliberate shift away from the cartoonish, overly bright fantasy art of the mid-20th century. Lee, an acclaimed British artist and conceptual designer, leveraged a hyper-detailed, ethereal aesthetic characterized by intricate line work and delicate, atmospheric watercolor washes of misty grey, muted green, and ancient stone. His paintings treated the architectural ruins of Osgiliath, the majestic spires of Minas Tirith, and the sweeping, gnarled landscapes of Lothlórien not as fantastical backdrops, but as real, historically weathered places heavy with the passage of time. Lee’s evocative, grounded realism so perfectly matched Tolkien’s textual vision that it directly earned him an Academy Award for his subsequent work as the lead conceptual designer for Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, cementing this illustrated edition as the definitive, ultimate visual standard for serious bibliophiles and collectors worldwide.

Description

Emerald green cloth binding with gilt dragon to upper board and gilt lettering to spine. Original dust wrapper. Fine condition. 
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