The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
1963* Second Edition, 15-17th Printing
Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston
ISBN: N/A
Hardcover in dust-jacket
3-322 pp.
Illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien
Hammond Page Ref.: p. 24
Tolkien Collector Ref.: Issue no. 30, pp. 18-32 (Frisby)*
Notes
15th-17th Printing: December, 1963 – 4,000 copies
18th Printing: July, 1964 – 5,000 copies
19th Printing: February, 1965 – 5,000 copies
20th Printing: August, 1965 – 7,750 copies
21st Printing: March, 1966 – 7,750 copies
22nd Printing: October, 1966 – 3,500 copies
23rd Printing: January, 1967 – 10,000 copies
The 15th-17th Printing(s) have no identifiable markings to distinguish them from each other and it seems likely that they may constitute one printing only.* Beginning with the 18th Printing, the print number is stated on the copyright page.
Beginning with the 15th-17th Printing(s), Houghton Mifflin discontinued importing sheets from Allen & Unwin and instead printed domestically. With this development the binding and jacket for The Hobbit were standardized and thereafter changed very little. The remainder of the Second Edition printings (15th-23rd) were enlarged, bound in light green colored boards and issued with a priced dust-jacket at $3.95 (the price moved from the foot to the head of the inside jacket flap with the 21st Printing). Additionally, the color frontispiece was removed and the maps were printed in black (as opposed to the black and red of earlier printings).
The runes on the dust-jacket of the 15th-18th printings mistakenly describe the book as being published by ‘George Allen & Unwin Ltd’. This was corrected to ‘Houghton Mifflin and Co.’ with the 19th Printing. The corrected runes read: ‘THE HOBBIT OR THERE AND BACK AGAIN BEING THE RECORD OF A YEARS JOURNEY MADE BY BILBO BAGGINS OF HOBBITON COMPILED FROM HIS MEMOIRS BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN AND PUBLISHED BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND CO’.
Jacket price: $3.95.
*Steven M. Frisby presents a convincing argument that there were no 15th or 16th Printings in ‘Identifying First and Second Edition Printings of the Houghton Mifflin Hobbit’ by Steven M. Frisby (a very useful guide printed in the The Tolkien Collector, Issue no. 30, pp. 16-32 in October, 2009).