First Edition 'Hobbit' Inscribed By J.R.R. Tolkien Sets Huge New Sales Record, Because Fans Will Pay A TON For a Rare Book
Source: Bustle.com
If you think you’d shell out a lot for a rare book, I bet you wouldn’t pay this much. At a recent auction a first edition copy of The Hobbit inscribed by J.R.R. Tolkien fetched — are you ready for it? — £137,000, or about $209,000. The buyer paid an unprecedented amount for the rare book, exceeding even the already-staggering projected sale price.
Leading up to the auction, The Guardian reports that the book was expected to go for between £50,000 and £70,000. Until that point, the most a copy of The Hobbit had fetched was around £50,000, back in 2008. Although a record at the time, it looks like a steal in comparison to the latest sale. Book collectors can get seriously into it.
So, what made this particular copy so special that someone was willing to pay for it more than cost of my college education (and without the help of Sallie Mae, mind you)? Besides the fact that people love The Hobbit, it’s one of only a “handful” of inscribed presentation copies. The exclusive group to whom Tolkien gifted them includes the likes of his buddy C.S. Lewis. (I don’t think I even want to know how much that copy would sell for. Probably the equivalent of my undergrad plus a hypothetical medical degree.) This particular book was given to Katherine Kilbride. Now deceased, she was a student of the author at Leeds University back in the 1920s.
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners Fiction
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize Winners Fiction
On Thursday, May 28, 2015, the 2015 Prizes were awarded at a luncheon ceremony at Low Library on the Columbia University campus in New York City. The names of the Prizewinners had been announced on April 20, 2015.
For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Awarded to "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr (Scribner), an imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.
Finalists
Also nominated as finalists in this category were: "Let Me Be Frank with You," by Richard Ford (Ecco), an unflinching series of narratives, set in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, insightfully portraying a society in decline; "The Moor's Account," by Laila Lalami (Pantheon), a creative narrative of the ill-fated 16th Century Spanish expedition to Florida, compassionately imagined out of the gaps and silences of history; and "Lovely, Dark, Deep," by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco), a rich collection of stories told from many rungs of the social ladder and distinguished by their intelligence, language and technique.
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