Description: First Edition: First Printing: A most attractive set of Tolkien's three Landmark Books: (1) The Fellowship of the Ring, one of 2,500 first impression / first state copies bound by Jarrold and Sons, very good condition (2) The Two Towers, one of 3,250 first impressions, very good condition (3) The Return of the King, one of 7,000 First Edition/First Printing copies, First State copy with signature mark '4' present on page 49 and lines 'sagging' in the middle versus being straight in the second state [Hammond/Anderson]. All volumes complete with complete with folded maps of Middle Earth tipped in onto recto. All the maps have been reattached to new end papers. Tolkien began The Lord of the Rings between 16 and 19 December 1937, three months after The Hobbit was published and George Allen & Unwin were encouraging Tolkien, against his inclination, to write a sequel. The rest is history. As C. S. Lewis commented (from the dust-jacket) : "If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still lack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true to its own inner laws; none so seemingly objective, so disinfected from the taint of the author's merely individual psychology, no so relevant to the actual human situation yet so free from allegory. And what fine shading there is in the variations of style to meet the almost endless diversity of scenes and characters - comic, homely, epic, monstrous, or diabolic.". 8vo. Externally beautiful red morocco leather rebind gilt lettered spines with five raised bands beautiful representation of the 'eye' taken from the original dustjacket artwork drawn by Tolkien all page edges gilt Internally new end papers maps intact and not torn minor hole to page 415 in The Return of The King minor foxing to the title page of The Two Towers