Exclusive: Author challenges assumption monks on Iona created manuscript, instead positing its origins are Pictish

Only a few hundred from the original 1,500 copy print run of Tolkien’s masterpiece are thought to still exist A rare first edition of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit that was found during a house clearance has sold at auction for a “record-breaking” £43,000. Bought by a private collector in the UK, the book is one of 1,500 original copies of the seminal fantasy novel that were published in 1937. Of those, only “a few hundred are believed to still remain”, according to the auction house Auctioneum, which discovered the novel without a dust cover on a bookcase at a home in Bristol. Continue reading...

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