Tolkien Book Breaks Auction Record

A rare first edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit fetched $66,630 at a July 12 London auction, marking the highest price ever paid for one of the author's books, says Sotheby's.

Tolkien, who died in 1973, inscribed the 1937 presentation copy of The Hobbit to his aunt Jane. Emily Jane Suffield, Tolkien's mother's younger sister, was an important influence on the author's personal and literary development, the auction house says. In fact, Suffield urged her nephew in 1961 to write a book "with Tom Bombadil at the heart of it"; The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was published the next year.