IF YOU had told the elderly owner of an original copy of The Hobbit that it would fetch £13,800, she would have thought you were Tolkien a load of nonsense.

But that dream came true for the mystery North-East owner of a 1937 first edition of the classic tome by JRR Tolkien, which went under the hammer at a Newcastle auction house yesterday.

The woman, from Blyth, Northumberland, inherited the volume from her father during the 1950s and had been expecting it to fetch between £3,000 and £5,000 at city auctioneer Anderson and Garland.

But last year's Oscar-nominated blockbuster film of Tolkien's follow-up work - The Lord of the Rings - is thought to have been behind the frenzied bidding that drove the final figure way beyond the asking price.

The auctioneer's book specialist, John Anderson, said: "The original of The Hobbit only ever sold a few thousand copies in this country, so they are now very rare.

"And, since the success of the film, it has become much more valuable."

The owner, who chose to remain anonymous, sneaked into the auction unannounced and left before all the bids were in.

Mr Anderson said: "Unknown to us, she turned up for the sale. She left before we could congratulate her.

"However, we were later able to ring her and discuss how pleased she was to find that a book given to her by her father in the 1950s had turned out to be so valuable."

The original book, with its special jacket, has long been a collectors' item, with progressively higher prices being paid for it over the years.