First edition. Octavo. Publisher’s pictorial paper covered boards, with a full-colour wraparound design illustrated by Pauline Baynes, in the original dustwrapper of the same design.
 
A near fine copy in a bright, near fine price-clipped dustwrapper. Some light rubbing to the head of the spine, and the upper margin of the upper panel.
 
The final book set in Middle-Earth to be published in Tolkien’s lifetime.
 
Tom Bombadil first surfaced in a 1934 poem Tolkien published in the Oxford magazine, and in 1937 Tolkien suggested that this character could be the hero of a sequel to The Hobbit.
 
This didn’t come to fruition, but in the 1960s Tolkien’s aunt Jane Neave suggested he should produce a gift book about Tom Bombadil that people could buy at Christmas presents.
 
Tolkien and his publisher collected poems about Tom, and other poems from Middle-earth into the present volume.