For £10k you can Baggins a first edition of The Hobbit

Rare discovery...first editions have Tolkien's original black-and-white illustrations

- By Tom Bevan

A RARE first edition of The Hobbit found tucked into an old bookcase during a routine house clearance is expected to fetch more than £10,000 at auction.

Only 1,500 copies of JRR Tolkien's first novel, which features Bilbo Baggins, were printed in the initial run in 1937, and of these just a few hundred are believed to remain.