Fifth impression, stated "second edition". Octavo. Publisher's green cloth, lettered and decorated blue.
 
Map endpapers, with Thror's Map to the front endpapers and the Map of Wilderland to the rear, colour frontispiece and eight black and white illustrations.
 
A very good, bright copy. Old bookseller's ticket to front free endpaper verso, gift inscription to half-title page.
 
The fifth impression of The Hobbit, given the moniker "Second Edition" due to Tolkien's revisions to the text, published in an edition of 3,500 copies in July 1951. These are the most significant textual revisions that Tolkien made to The Hobbit in his lifetime, reworking sections of the text so that it fit the narrative of The Lord Of The Rings, which was approaching its publication. Most notably, Tolkien revised sections of Chapter V, Riddles In The Dark, and turned the magic ring that Gollum willingly bets and loses, into the One Ring which he cannot bear to be parted from. Tolkien also adds a prefatory note explaining that these changes are down to Biblo's inaccurate recordings of the events of The Hobbit in order to conceal his own possession of the One Ring.