Mr. Underhill wrote:

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THE HOBBIT BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN 1963 FOURTEENTH IMPRESSION

313893763777

Seller: mfr_rare_books

(2730)

Ended Mar 4, 2022

This item ended more than 90 days ago

Some nasty foxing on the page edges of that one. Yuck.

A lot of yellowing (moisture damage?) on the title page as well

There is definitely a lot of iron in the 14th impression paper, but that is fairly nasty example - must have been exposed to quite a bit of humidity to cause that level of staining. Unfortunately from observation of listings over the years, they need to have been stored quite well or they get fairly ugly. My 14th has no foxing to the edges, but has slight staining to the title page.

I did have a $5 reading copy of the 14th which was stained like that copy, though the page edge foxing was less severe. I chopped that one up to get the illustrations and practice various book repair techniques, IIRC.

Must admit I hate foxing. Other than my 1942 Book Club page edges, don't really have any on the Hobbits. Actually, even my 1942 doesn't have much - I suspect less iron contamination. I think those 12/13/14 copies all use paper that isn't great (and they are all the same thickness, so likely same paper stock).

Here's a set of first printings of the Ballantine Lord of the Rings paperbacks, with the green box.

I think this listing in particular is interesting for the price tag on the box, which I hadn't seen before (though the glue residue from it is visible on other boxes I have seen).

Also very interesting are the Diana Paxton fan dust-jackets that were included with Niekas - there were many in 1965 that didn't like Remington's art, and these wrappers were a popular cover. They were loosely included (not stapled) in Niekas and usually used or lost, thus not easy to find.

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Lord of the Rings - Tolkien - Ballantine - first edition + case - unread copies

203847299882

Seller: bookmint

(2374)

Ended Mar 10, 2022

This item ended more than 90 days ago

Regarding those Diana Paxson dust-jackets, when I ran across them in the Niekas scans, I was so taken with them—it's such a charming thing to have produced these for others—that I cleaned the images up. The attached pdf includes all four: that for The Hobbit and those for the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings.

While our modern paperbacks' covers may not be quite so 'interesting' as the old Ballantine covers, the Paxson dust-jackets are a fun thing to have.