Estimated Ship Date: October 22, 2024

Sauron has returned. . . watch The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 on Prime Video.

For the first time ever, a beautiful slipcased edition of the enchanting prelude to The Lord of the Rings, illustrated throughout with over 50 sketches, drawings, paintings, and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien himself, with the complete text printed in two colors and with many bonus features unique to this edition.

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey “there and back again.” They have a plot to raid the treasure hoard of Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon…

Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit was published on 21 September 1937. With a beautiful cover design, a handful of black & white drawings and two maps by the author himself, the book became an instant success and was reprinted shortly afterwards with five color plates.

Tolkien’s own selection of finished paintings and drawings have become inseparable from his text, adorning editions of The Hobbit for more than 85 years. But the published art has afforded only a glimpse of Tolkien’s creative process, and many additional sketches, colored drawings, and maps—although exhibited and published elsewhere—have never appeared within the pages of The Hobbit.

In this unique enhanced edition of Tolkien’s enchanting classic tale, the full panoply of his art is reproduced for the first time, presenting more than 50 illustrations to accompany Bilbo Baggins on his adventure “there and back again.”

Unique to this edition are two poster-size, fold-out maps of Thror’s Map and Wilderland, an art print reproducing Tolkien's original dust jacket design for the book, a two-sided print reproducing Thorin's letter to Bilbo, and an illustrated 88-page booklet which includes a history of The Hobbit,  an essay on Dragons by Tolkien, samples of early manuscript pages, Tolkien's poem "The Hoard," and more.

This beautiful volume comes bound with a green leather spine featuring raised ribs elegantly stamped and fine black cloth covers stamped in silver, green, and gold foil. The pages are all edge in gold and include a ribbon marker, And the book is housed -- along with the companion booklet -- in a custom die-cut clothbound slipcase stamped in gold foil.