OXFORD, ENGLAND — A recently discovered map of Middle Earth annotated by J.R.R. Tolkien has been found in the copy of the acclaimed illustrator Pauline Baynes’ copy of the Lord of the Rings. Baynes had removed the map from another edition of the novel as she began work on her own color Map of MIddle Earth for Tolkien, which would go on to be published by Allen & Unwin in 1970.

Tolkien himself had then copiously annotated it in green ink and pencil, with Baynes adding her own notes to the document while she worked.

Blackwell’s Rare Books is currently exhibiting the map in Oxford and selling it for £60,000 (91,878 in U.S dollars) and has called the map “an important document and perhaps the finest piece of Tolkien ephemera to emerge in the last 20 years at least.”

Source: The Guardian