A signed copy of the Hobbit-Dinner menu, the famous banquet honouring J.R.R. Tolkien, and the only such event he attended in his lifetime. The menu card is printed in yellow in heavy laid card. Tolkien has signed the card to the rear. It it titled “Hobbit-Dinner” and then gives each course of the banquet: Egg-salad a la Barliman Butterbur Maggot-soup Fricandeau a la Gimli Vegetales of Goldberry and Vegetables of Galadriel Fried or cooked potatoes a la Gamgee Ice and Fruits of Gildor. At the foot of the menu is an illustration of Gandalf and three hobbits.
 
A very good example, folded one.
 
A signed relic of a unique event in the life of J.R.R. Tolkien. In 1956, just one year after the original publication of The Lord Of The Rings in Britain, the book was translated and published in a foreign language for the first time. This first translated edition was into Dutch, and given the title In De Ban Van De Ring (Under The Spell Of The Ring). Due to the novels length, and the printing costs resulting in high retail prices, the Dutch publisher Het Spectrum received a lukewarm reception from most booksellers. The exception was Voorhoeve & Dietrich, a Rotterdam bookshop that championed the novel. Voorhoeve & Dietrich were known for hosting literary luncheons to honour their customers favourite authors, and in late 1957 they contacted Het Spectrum to see if they could invite Tolkien over for a “Hobbit Dinner”. Het Spectrum wrote to Rayner Unwin, who passed the letter onto Tolkien, who in turn replied. After some back a forth, a date was agreed: Tolkien would visit Rotterdam on 28th March 1958. The banquet, as you can see from the card, extended over several Middle-earth themed courses, and speeches honouring Tolkien were given in between. Worried that Tolkien might not want to eat meat on a Friday as a Roman Catholic, the organisers received special dispensation from the deacon of Rotterdam to serve Fricandeau a la Gimli. Anyone receiving looking at the menu aghast at “Maggot-soup” would have been relieved to learn that it was in fact mushroom. To complement the theme of the evening, pipe tobacco and clay pipes were provided by Van Rossum, with posters around the room advertising “Pipe-weed for Hobbits: In three qualities: Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby and Southern Star”. The evening ended with Tolkien giving an address to the audience, in a sort of parody of Bilbo’s birthday speech. It was a great success, and he went on to sign books that attendees had brought with them, as well as copies of the menu, as here. After his return to Oxford, he wrote to the organisers thanking them for arranging the event: “I still find it hard to believe that all this really happened to me! It was a most marvellous and memorable event... I shall not, of course, ever forget the Hobbit-maaltijd, and the graciousness of all to me. The sooner I see your country again the better pleased I shall be. It seems clear to me that (as it suggests in the book) the English hobbits are really the migrant colonists, and their original home-land is ”across the sea“.”
Despite the success of the evening, this remains the only such event that Tolkien ever attended.