Lord of the Rings books sell for thousands at Tennants of Leyburn

The sale, at Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, on Friday (August 23) saw strong bidding and an impressive 92 per cent selling rate.

The sale was led by Tolkien, with The Lord of the Rings Trilogy published by George Allen & Unwin selling for £6,500 (excluding buyer’s premium).

The trilogy comprised ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’, 1954 first edition, second impression, ‘The Two Towers’, 1954 first edition, first impression, and ‘The Return of the King’, 1955 first edition, first impression, first state.

A 1946 fourth impression copy of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, sold for £5,000 (Image: TENNANTS OF LEYBURN)

Selling at top estimate was a 1946 fourth impression copy of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, which fetched an impressive £5,000.

Attracting competitive bidding to sell for £6,500 was a group of four geological volumes, including Reverend William Buckland’s Reliquiae Diluvianae; or Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures and Diluvial Gravelan.

‘The Hyena’s Den at Kirkdale, near Kirby Moorside in Yorkshire’ in Rev. William Buckland’s ‘Reliquiae Diluvianae…’ (Image: TENNANTS OF LEYBURN)

From further afield, a Map of Van Dieman’s Land, Tasmania, published in 1839 sold well above estimate at £1,900, and an interesting collection of photographs of Africa taken in the early 20th century sold for £1,400.

The photographs were compiled by David Anderson, who was born in Glasgow, and comprised images of scenery, buildings, street scenes, colonial life, hunting, sporting endeavours and people both indigenous and European mainly in British Central Africa, with a few taking in Dar-Es-Salam.

Detail from a collection of photographs of Africa, which sold for £1,400 (Image: TENNANTS OF LEYBURN)

Also of note was an account of a British Economic Mission to the Far East, 1930. In the form of a series of lengthy letters written by JL Edmondson, Secretary of the Federation of Calico Printers.

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It documented a trade mission to Japan and China by the government appointed Cotton Mission to develop British trade in these materials. The letters recount the voyages complete with numerous stops on route, and an endless round of social and business engagements from golf and meals with geishas to visiting mills and meetings with government officials. The lot sold for £650.

Selling well, too, was a photographic portrait postcard of Winston Churchill, signed by the sitter, which sold for £450.

The sale achieved a total hammer price of £66,930, with a 92 per cent sold rate for the 145 lots.