Rare copy of 'The Hobbit' to be auctioned

A rare first edition of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit was expected to sell for thousands of pounds yesterday after it was found during a house clearance in southwest England.

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The book is one of 1,500 original copies of the British author's seminal fantasy novel that were published in 1937.

Of those, only "a few hundred are believed to still remain", according to auction house Auctioneum, which discovered the book on an old bookcase at a home in Bristol.

"The surviving books from the initial print run are now considered some of the most sought-after books in modern literature," Auctioneum said in a statement.