Incidently, check out the postage! Having never purchased a book at £20K, I have to ask -is this how much it would cost to deliver? (or is this a slip? £3.50 perhaps? )

BH

Hi Khamul -

In the US, a crayon is a stick of colored wax (and the best known maker is Crayola.) These are mostly used by children in coloring books where they color in the trees green and the sky blue, etc. In French, crayon is a pencil. So I was wondering if crayon is not in this instance a colored pencil. In any case, £20K is MORE than a bit steep for such a book with or without this provenance. I have an inscribed and signed JRRT calendar that you can view on my website. As it is probably one of the last articles that the master ever signed, I think it invaluable and would not ever sell it.

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

Well, I took crayon to mean coloured wax, as you do. So the US and UK meaning appear to be the same. In UK a coloured pencil is... well, a coloured pencil. Although you'd call it a colored pencil!

The photo is poor, so you can't tell either way. Although with the seller being from the UK I'd guess he didn't mean pencil, and did indeed intend to mean crayon as you understand it. What was Tolkien playing at?; inconsiderate so-and-so...

BH

What I gather from the listing is that it includes insurance - presumably for the asking price. Does look somewhat plausible to me.