HOBBIT fever has spread to Gloucestershire with a set of signed first editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy selling for £24,000 at an auction in South Cerney.

The books were part of collection of J. R. R. Tolkien books published by Rayner Unwin – including a first edition of the Hobbit which more than doubled its estimate by selling for £13,500 – which went under the hammer at Dominic Winter auction house recently.

Last Thursday around £30,000 of goods was stolen in a smash-and-grab raid at the auction house.

Dominic Winters auctioneer and senior valuer Chris Albury said a ten-year-old Rayner Unwin had convinced his father to publish The Hobbit after reading a manuscript.

He also later played a key role in getting Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings published despite concerns that splitting the book into three would be a commercial and financial disaster.

“To have Rayner's copies of both these landmark works of English literature was very special for us and for collectors the world over,” he said.