An “astonishingly rare” first edition of The Hobbit has sold for a “record-breaking” £43,000 at auction.
The copy of JRR Tolkien’s novel is one of only 1,500 copies that were printed in 1937. It was discovered without a dustcover on a bookcase during a home clearance in Bristol.
It was sold to a private collector in the UK through an online auction at Auctioneum in Bath, Somerset, earlier.