There and Back Again: The Hobbit at The Bodleian Library

Art 01 Mar 10 A small display of Tolkein's original artwork and manuscripts will be on display Thursday, 4 March The Bodleian Library is taking part in World Book Day 2010 by exhibiting a selection of JRR Tolkien's original artwork which was used to illustrate . A unique manuscript of Hobbit doodles and a rare first edition of the book will also be on display. The free-of-charge one-day display will take place in the Divinity School of the Bodleian Library on Thursday, 4 March 2010. was published in September 1937, and all 1,500 copies of the first edition were sold out within three months. It received generally enthusiastic reviews, and after the success of the American edition in 1938 the book became one of the world's best-selling single works of fiction, and has been translated into nearly forty languages. All I can remember about the start of The Hobbit is sitting correcting School Certificate papers 
On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' - was illustrated throughout with monochrome drawings and maps also printed in the first British edition. At the suggestion of his American publishers, who wanted to include colour plates in their edition, Tolkien painted five watercolours between mid-July and mid-August 1937, four of which were reproduced in the first American edition published in March 1938.