The Texas A&M Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection is one of the most extensive and best regarded libraries of its type in the world. The library currently has five million books available and is George R.R Martins institution of choice for all of his titles since 1993. For the first time ever George donated a book not written by him to the library, a first edition copy of the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The first edition of the Hobbit is an expensive book with the average title fetching £60,000 at auction. There was only 1,500 original copies were ever made and collectors go wild when one becomes available.

When George donated the book on Febuary 29th he made it a point to say that the highbrow stuff shouldn’t be the only thing preserved “All of it should be preserved. Not just the stuff that we deem high culture, but popular culture and ordinary culture and ephemera and juvenilia, preserve all of it because we don’t know what we’ll want 50 years from now, what’s going to be important 100 years from now, or whether indeed 1,000 years from now, Stan Lee will stand next to Shakespeare.

