The Lord of the Rings, 1956/57 Set, Impr. 5,5,3 First Set VG+- NF

Allen and Unwin 1956, 57, 57 a set sold in early 1957. Jackets have spotting and tears on the corners, especially RotK, but have the original light grey colour which is extremely rare to find now. Overall well above average for the age as you are mostly paying for dust jackets, but the books. Its rare to find the original grey as most have faded to beige or white. The books have been read many times, but bindings tight, spine gilt bright. FotR has a 6th impress jacket on an 5th book. Quite common for the publisher to use up jackets, back and forward. These earlier printing sets are getting harder to find in collectible, investment condition. This set is unique as discussed in like past listings and in our Tolkien collectors guide. The early printings were very expensive so initially the book titles were sold separately, not as a set. You could never buy a 1,1,1 set off the shelf in the day. Three book sets were assembled over time as most people could not afford to buy hardback books all at once. The first set of three books you could buy as a three book set was in 1957, thus a true "first edition" set as defined by the first time available to the public. Printing technology made books cheaper by the early 1960's and they were eventually all sold as sets, many in special built slipcases. Impressions available at the time in any given year would have been random distribution between all the bookstores and based on what each sold and what they had leftover. You might have gone from store to store looking to buy the first printing of each title and found it. However, contrary to the hype, they were not best sellers until the mid-1960's so not collectiable then as they are today. I've created a matrix (see photo) of year and limpressions as books tended to be released around the Xmas based on the assumption they were bought together and stayed together as evident by their uniform wear of books and jackets today. If you picked the three titles off the shelf in a given book store in 1957 the impressions could have been 5,5,3 or 7,5,3 or 4. or higher. As the original distribution records, not printing records, are long gone we can only estimate distribution and availability of impression and years. Even today, few people look at the copyright page of a new book. Impressions 7,5,4 would have been the most plentiful in terms of new impressions configuartions available in 1957, but its probable the earliest possible configuration would be 5,5,3 or 4 impressions, this set. 5,5,5 is possible, but less probable. Later that year some sets were sold in the very first slipcase limited to 300. This 5,5,3 set would have proceeded that. A greater number of impressions configurations would have been available with each passing year, however they would not have printed new impressions until the old ones sold. A set all the same printing year wasn't consistant until the early 1960's where the impressions for each year were also consistent. Thus we call ths set a true first edition "set" from being kept together all this time. They were not necessarily pieced together later. However, it is possible they could have been, but unlikey because they match colour so well. Light colour jacket paper stains and wears quickly. We like to call this particular impression set the true "First edition" as the very first time you could buy them all together off the shelf. We feel this matters to the value for some fans and they've been kept together by one beloved owner. Very rare, I get this first edition sets only every couple years, less than before. Dear American Customers, your items will arrive tariffs paid by us. I would expect delays in delivery new customs systems come on-line. Please feel free to ask any questions on any of our items.…