This seems to be a first U.S. printing in a library rebinding (case and endpapers). The seller seems to have his own definition of "clean" pages.

Wayne & Christina

We have a Dutch Linguaphone set which also has five books:

Linguaphone Conversational Course: English

Supplementair boekje ten gebruike van Nederlandsche studeerenden (tucked into a pocket in the above book)

Engelsche Grammatica in 30 Lessen (with loosely inserted checklists for students to use in tracking their studies)

Woordenlijst Engelsch-Nederlandsch van den Linguaphone Conversatie-Cursus Engelsch

Handleiding bij de Linguaphone-Studie


Wayne & Christina

The spine lettering did change from hand-lettered to typeset with the 6th impression (1954). The 'THE' of the jacket spine title also seems to have been strengthened at that time.

Wayne

Edit Trotter Wayne is replying to an incorrect comment by me which was incorrect and I deleted.

Was it included in the 2nd GA&U impression?

Yes. I have a copy in front of me.

Wayne

that's from 1st edition Houghton Mifflin edition, I think

Yes, it's the version redrawn (almost certainly not by Tolkien) for the American edition and printed as line art rather than as a half-tone.

I often wondered why it was not in the later copies, did Tolkien not like it or think it was out of place in the book?

Tolkien liked it just fine, though he wanted it to be the front endpaper in The Hobbit, with Thror's Map an inserted plate (with the moon-runes on the back), not the other way around. As Garm says, its disappearance after the second printing (1937) of the Allen & Unwin edition, along with all but one of the colour plates, was probably a matter of economy, and austerity continued until well after the war. I'm not aware of any correspondence about Mirkwood when the colour art returned to the book; perhaps new printing plates were needed, and because the original art for Mirkwood was unavailable (Tolkien had given the drawing to a student from China), it was left out. But this is just guessing.

Wayne