The Hobbit
drawing by Tolkien | ||
Author | J. R. R. Tolkien | |
---|---|---|
Illustrator | J. R. R. Tolkien | |
Cover artist | J. R. R. Tolkien | |
Country | United Kingdom | |
Language | English | |
Genre |
| |
Set in | LC Class PR6039.O32 H63 | |
Followed by | The Lord of the Rings |
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a
The Hobbit is set in
The story is told in the form of a
The publisher was encouraged by the book's critical and financial success and, therefore, requested a sequel. As Tolkien's work progressed on its successor, The Lord of the Rings, he made retrospective accommodations for it in The Hobbit. These few but significant changes were integrated into the second edition. Further editions followed with minor emendations, including those reflecting Tolkien's changing concept of the world into which Bilbo stumbled. The work has never been out of print. Its ongoing legacy encompasses many adaptations for stage, screen, radio, board games, and video games. Several of these adaptations have received critical recognition on their own merits.
Narrative
Characters
The plot involves a host of other characters of varying importance, such as the
Plot
The group travels into the wild. Gandalf saves the company from
The company enters the dark forest of Mirkwood without Gandalf, who has other responsibilities. In Mirkwood, Bilbo first saves the dwarves from giant spiders and then from the dungeons of the Wood-elves. Nearing the Lonely Mountain, the travellers are welcomed by the human inhabitants of Lake-town, who hope the dwarves will fulfil prophecies of Smaug's demise. The expedition reaches the mountain and finds the secret door. The dwarves send a reluctant Bilbo inside to scout the dragon's lair. He steals a great cup and, while conversing with Smaug, spots a gap in the ancient dragon's armour. The enraged dragon, deducing that Lake-town has aided the intruders, flies off to destroy the town. A thrush overhears Bilbo's report of Smaug's vulnerability and tells Lake-town resident Bard. Smaug wreaks havoc on the town, until Bard shoots an arrow into the chink in Smaug's armour, killing the dragon.
When the dwarves take possession of the mountain, Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, the most-treasured heirloom of Thorin's family, and hides it away. The Wood-elves and Lake-men request compensation for Lake-town's destruction and settlement of old claims on the treasure. When Thorin refuses to give them anything, they besiege the mountain. However, Thorin manages to send a message to his kinfolk in the
Gandalf reappears to warn all of an approaching army of goblins and Wargs. The dwarves, men and elves band together, but only with the timely arrival of the eagles and Beorn, who fights in his bear form and kills the goblin general, do they win the climactic Battle of Five Armies. Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies.
Bilbo accepts only a small portion of his share of the treasure, having no want or need for more, but still returns home a very wealthy hobbit roughly a year and a month after he first left. Years later, he writes the story of his adventures.
Concept and creation
Background
In the early 1930s Tolkien was pursuing an academic career at Oxford as
In a 1955 letter to
Setting
The setting of The Hobbit, as described on its original dust jacket, is "ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men" in an unnamed
Illustration and design
Tolkien's correspondence and publisher's records show that he was involved in the design and illustration of the entire book. All elements were the subject of considerable correspondence and fussing over by Tolkien. Rayner Unwin, in his publishing memoir, comments: "In 1937 alone Tolkien wrote 26 letters to George Allen & Unwin... detailed, fluent, often pungent, but infinitely polite and exasperatingly precise... I doubt any author today, however famous, would get such scrupulous attention."[17]
Even the maps, of which Tolkien originally proposed five, were considered and debated. He wished Thror's Map to be tipped in (that is, glued in after the book has been bound) at first mention in the text, and with the moon letter
Originally Allen & Unwin planned to illustrate the book only with the endpaper maps, but Tolkien's first tendered sketches so charmed the publisher's staff that they opted to include them without raising the book's price despite the extra cost. Thus encouraged, Tolkien supplied a second batch of illustrations. The publisher accepted all of these as well, giving the first edition ten black-and-white illustrations plus the two endpaper maps. The illustrated scenes were: The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water, The
Satisfied with his skills, the publishers asked Tolkien to design a dust jacket. This project, too, became the subject of many iterations and much correspondence, with Tolkien always writing disparagingly of his own ability to draw. The runic inscription around the edges of the illustration are a phonetic transliteration of English, giving the title of the book and details of the author and publisher.[22] The original jacket design contained several shades of various colours, but Tolkien redrew it several times using fewer colours each time. His final design consisted of four colours. The publishers, mindful of the cost, removed the red from the sun to end up with only black, blue, and green ink on white stock.[23]
The publisher's production staff designed a binding, but Tolkien objected to several elements. Through several iterations, the final design ended up as mostly the author's. The spine shows runes: two "
Once illustrations were approved for the book, Tolkien proposed colour plates as well. The publisher would not relent on this, so Tolkien pinned his hopes on the American edition to be published about six months later. Houghton Mifflin rewarded these hopes with the replacement of the frontispiece (The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the Water) in colour and the addition of new colour plates: Rivendell, Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes, Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves and Conversation with
Different editions have been illustrated in diverse ways. Many follow the original scheme at least loosely, but many others are illustrated by other artists, especially the many translated editions. Some cheaper editions, particularly paperback, are not illustrated except with the maps. "The Children's Book Club" edition of 1942 includes the black-and-white pictures but no maps, an anomaly.[27] Douglas Anderson's The Annotated Hobbit is illustrated with many black-and-white drawings taken from translations of the story into some 25 languages.[28][29]
Tolkien's use of runes, both as decorative devices and as magical signs within the story, has been cited as a major cause for the popularization of runes within "
Genre
The Hobbit takes cues from narrative models of
Tolkien intended The Hobbit as a "fairy-story" and wrote it in a tone suited to addressing children;[38] he said later that the book was not specifically written for children, but had rather been created out of his interest in mythology and legend.[39] Many of the initial reviews refer to the work as a fairy story. However, according to Jack Zipes writing in The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, Bilbo is an atypical character for a fairy tale.[40] The work is much longer than Tolkien's ideal proposed in his essay On Fairy-Stories. Many fairy tale motifs, such as the repetition of similar events seen in the dwarves' arrival at Bilbo's and Beorn's homes, and folklore themes, such as trolls turning to stone, are to be found in the story.[41]
The book is popularly called (and often marketed as) a
Style
The basic form of the story is that of a quest,[49] told in episodes. For the most part of the book, each chapter introduces a different denizen of the Wilderland, some helpful and friendly towards the protagonists, and others threatening or dangerous. However the general tone is kept light-hearted, being interspersed with songs and humour. One example of the use of song to maintain tone is when Thorin and Company are kidnapped by goblins, who, when marching them into the underworld, sing:
Clap! Snap! the black crack!
Grip, grab! Pinch, nab!
And down down toGoblin-town
You go, my lad!
This
Influences
Norse mythology
Tolkien's works show many
Tolkien's use of descriptive names such as
Old English literature
Themes from
Medieval and mythological sources
The representation of the dwarves in The Hobbit was influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding the Jewish people and their history.[69] The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their ancient homeland at the Lonely Mountain, and living among other groups whilst retaining their own culture are all derived from the medieval image of Jews,[69][70] whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible.[69] The Dwarvish calendar invented for The Hobbit reflects the Jewish calendar which begins in late autumn.[69] And although Tolkien denied that he used allegory, the dwarves taking Bilbo out of his complacent existence has been seen as an eloquent metaphor for the "impoverishment of Western society without Jews."[70]
The scholar of literature James L. Hodge describes the story as
19th century fiction
Tolkien wished to imitate the prose and poetry romances of the 19th-century Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris[72] in style and approach. The Desolation of Smaug, portraying dragons as detrimental to landscape, is a motif explicitly borrowed from Morris.[73] The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns writes that Bilbo's character and adventures match many details of Morris's expedition in Iceland. She comments, for instance, that the humorous drawings of Morris riding through the wilds of Iceland by his friend the artist Edward Burne-Jones can serve well as models for Bilbo on his adventures.[71]
Tolkien wrote of being impressed as a boy by
The Tolkien scholar Mark T. Hooker has catalogued a lengthy series of parallels between The Hobbit and Jules Verne's 1864 Journey to the Center of the Earth. These include, among other things, a hidden runic message and a celestial alignment that direct the adventurers to the goals of their quests.[77]
Tolkien's portrayal of goblins in The Hobbit was particularly influenced by George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin.[78] However, MacDonald's influence on Tolkien was more profound than the shaping of individual characters and episodes; his works helped Tolkien form his whole thinking on the role of fantasy within his Christian faith.[79]
Critical analysis
Themes
The evolution and maturation of the protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is central to the story. This journey of maturation, where Bilbo gains a clear sense of identity and confidence in the outside world, may be seen in psychological terms as a Bildungsroman rather than a traditional quest.[80] The Jungian concept of individuation is also reflected through this theme of growing maturity and capability, with the author contrasting Bilbo's personal growth against the arrested development of the dwarves.[81] Thus, while Gandalf exerts a parental influence over Bilbo early on, it is Bilbo who gradually takes over leadership of the party, a fact the dwarves could not bear to acknowledge.[82] The analogue of the "underworld" and the hero returning from it with a boon (such as the ring, or Elvish blades) that benefits his society is seen to fit the mythic archetypes regarding initiation and male coming-of-age as described by Joseph Campbell.[50] Chance compares the development and growth of Bilbo against other characters to the concepts of just kingship versus sinful kingship derived from the Ancrene Wisse (which Tolkien had written on in 1929), and a Christian understanding of Beowulf.[83] Shippey comments that Bilbo is nothing like a king, and that Chance's talk of "types" just muddies the waters, though he agrees with her that there are "self-images of Tolkien" throughout his fiction; and she is right, too, in seeing Middle-earth as a balance between creativity and scholarship, "Germanic past and Christian present".[84]
The overcoming of greed and selfishness has been seen as the central moral of the story.
The Hobbit employs themes of
Interpretation
As in plot and setting, Tolkien brings his literary theories to bear in forming characters and their interactions. He portrays Bilbo as a modern anachronism exploring an essentially antique world. Bilbo is able to negotiate and interact within this antique world because language and tradition make connections between the two worlds. For example, Gollum's riddles are taken from old historical sources, while those of Bilbo come from modern nursery books. It is the form of the riddle game, familiar to both, which allows Gollum and Bilbo to engage each other, rather than the content of the riddles themselves. This idea of a superficial contrast between characters' individual linguistic style, tone and sphere of interest, leading to an understanding of the deeper unity between the ancient and modern, is a recurring theme in The Hobbit.[60]
Smaug is the main antagonist. In many ways the Smaug episode reflects and references the dragon of Beowulf, and Tolkien uses the episode to put into practice some of the ground-breaking literary theories he had developed about the Old English poem in its portrayal of the dragon as having bestial intelligence.[62] Tolkien greatly prefers this motif over the later medieval trend of using the dragon as a symbolic or allegorical figure, such as in the legend of St. George.[91] Smaug the dragon with his golden hoard may be seen as an example of the traditional relationship between evil and metallurgy as collated in the depiction of Pandæmonium with its "Belched fire and rolling smoke" in John Milton's Paradise Lost.[92] Of all the characters, Smaug's speech is the most modern, using idioms such as "Don't let your imagination run away with you!"
Just as Tolkien's literary theories have been seen to influence the tale, so have Tolkien's experiences. The Hobbit may be read as Tolkien's parable of World War I with the hero being plucked from his rural home and thrown into a far-off war where traditional types of heroism are shown to be futile.[93] The tale as such explores the theme of heroism. As Janet Brennan Croft notes, Tolkien's literary reaction to war at this time differed from most post-war writers by eschewing irony as a method for distancing events and instead using mythology to mediate his experiences.[94] Similarities to the works of other writers who faced the Great War are seen in The Hobbit, including portraying warfare as anti-pastoral: in "The Desolation of Smaug", both the area under the influence of Smaug before his demise and the setting for the Battle of Five Armies later are described as barren, damaged landscapes.[95] The Hobbit makes a warning against repeating the tragedies of World War I,[96] and Tolkien's attitude as a veteran may well be summed up by Bilbo's comment: "Victory after all, I suppose! Well, it seems a very gloomy business."[94]
Reception
On its publication in October 1937, The Hobbit was met with almost unanimously favourable reviews from publications both in the UK and the US, including
The truth is that in this book a number of good things, never before united, have come together: a fund of humour, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholar's with the poet's grasp of mythology... The professor has the air of inventing nothing. He has studied trolls and dragons at first hand and describes them with that fidelity that is worth oceans of glib "originality."
Lewis compares the book to Alice in Wonderland in that both children and adults may find different things to enjoy in it, and places it alongside Flatland, Phantastes, and The Wind in the Willows.[97] W. H. Auden, in his review of the sequel The Fellowship of the Ring, calls The Hobbit "one of the best children's stories of this century".[98] Auden was later to correspond with Tolkien, and they became friends.
The Hobbit was nominated for the Carnegie Medal,[99] and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction of 1938.[100] More recently, the book has been recognized as "Most Important 20th-Century Novel (for Older Readers)" in the Children's Books of the Century poll in Books for Keeps.[101] In 2012 it was ranked number 14 on a list of the top 100 children's novels published by School Library Journal.[102]
Publication of the sequel The Lord of the Rings altered many critics' reception of the work. Instead of approaching The Hobbit as a children's book in its own right, critics such as Randel Helms picked up on the idea of The Hobbit as being a "prelude", relegating the story to a dry-run for the later work. Countering a presentist interpretation are those who say this approach misses out on much of the original's value as a children's book and as a work of high fantasy in its own right, and that it disregards the book's influence on these genres.[46] Commentators such as Paul Kocher,[103] John D. Rateliff[104] and C. W. Sullivan[46] encourage readers to treat the works separately, both because The Hobbit was conceived, published, and received independently of the later work, and to avoid dashing readers' expectations of tone and style.
Publication
George Allen & Unwin published the first edition of The Hobbit on 21 September 1937 with a print run of 1,500 copies, which sold out by December because of enthusiastic reviews.
Subsequent
Revisions
In December 1937 The Hobbit's publisher, Stanley Unwin, asked Tolkien for a sequel. In response Tolkien provided drafts for The Silmarillion, but the editors rejected them, believing that the public wanted "more about hobbits".[112] Tolkien subsequently began work on The New Hobbit, which would eventually become The Lord of the Rings,[112] a course that would not only change the context of the original story, but lead to substantial changes to the character of Gollum.
In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum willingly bets his magic ring on the outcome of the riddle-game, and he and Bilbo part amicably.[7] In the second edition edits, to reflect the new concept of the One Ring and its corrupting abilities, Tolkien made Gollum more aggressive towards Bilbo and distraught at losing the ring. The encounter ends with Gollum's curse, "Thief! Thief, Thief, Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!" This presages Gollum's portrayal in The Lord of the Rings.[113]
Tolkien sent this revised version of the chapter "Riddles in the Dark" to Unwin as an example of the kinds of changes needed to bring the book into conformity with The Lord of the Rings,[114] but he heard nothing back for years. When he was sent galley proofs of a new edition, Tolkien was surprised to find that the sample text had been incorporated.[115] In The Lord of the Rings, the original version of the riddle game is explained as a lie made up by Bilbo under the harmful influence of the Ring, whereas the revised version contains the "true" account.[116] The revised text became the second edition, published in 1951 in both the UK and the US.[117]
Tolkien began a new version in 1960, attempting to adjust the tone of The Hobbit to its sequel. He abandoned the new revision at chapter three after he received criticism that it "just wasn't The Hobbit", implying it had lost much of its light-hearted tone and quick pace.[118]
After an unauthorized paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings appeared from
Posthumous critical editions
Since the author's death, two critical editions of The Hobbit have been published, providing commentary on the creation, emendation and development of the text. In his 1988
With The History of The Hobbit, published in two parts in 2007, John D. Rateliff provides the full text of the earliest and intermediary drafts of the book, alongside commentary that shows relationships to Tolkien's scholarly and creative works, both contemporary and later. In addition, Rateliff provides the abandoned 1960s retelling of the first three chapters, which sought to harmonise The Hobbit with The Lord of the Rings, and previously unpublished illustrations by Tolkien. The book separates commentary from Tolkien's text, allowing the reader to read the original drafts as self-contained stories.[58]
Collectors' market
While reliable figures are difficult to obtain, estimated global sales of The Hobbit run between 35
Legacy
The Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit's sequel The Lord of the Rings is often claimed to be its greatest legacy. The plots share the same basic structure in the same sequence: the
Event | The Hobbit | The Lord of the Rings |
---|---|---|
Start | From Bag End in the Shire | |
End of 1st phase | Trip down River Running, nearing Erebor |
Trip down River Anduin, nearing Mordor
|
Approaching the goal | Cross the dragon's withered hearth | Cross the evil polluted plain of Gorgoroth
|
Achieving the quest | Enter hole in side of the Lonely Mountain | Enter hole in side of Mount Doom
|
Success marked by | Arrival of Great Eagles | |
Returning home | Have to stop auction of Bag End | Have to scour the Shire of Sharkey's evil |
The Lord of the Rings contains several more supporting scenes, and has a more sophisticated plot structure, following the paths of multiple characters. Tolkien wrote the later story in much less humorous tones and infused it with more complex moral and philosophical themes. The differences between the two stories can cause difficulties when readers, expecting them to be similar, find that they are not.[132] Many of the thematic and stylistic differences arose because Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as a story for children, and The Lord of the Rings for the same audience, who had subsequently grown up since its publication. Further, Tolkien's concept of Middle-earth was to continually change and slowly evolve throughout his life and writings.[134]
In education
The style and themes of the book have been seen to help stretch young readers' literacy skills, preparing them to approach the works of Dickens and Shakespeare. By contrast, offering advanced younger readers modern teenage-oriented fiction may not exercise their reading skills, while the material may contain themes more suited to adolescents.[135] As one of several books that have been recommended for 11- to 14-year-old boys to encourage literacy in that demographic, The Hobbit is promoted as "the original and still the best fantasy ever written."[136]
Several teaching guides and books of study notes have been published to help teachers and students gain the most from the book. The Hobbit introduces literary concepts, notably allegory, to young readers, as the work has been seen to have allegorical aspects reflecting the life and times of the author.[95] Meanwhile, the author himself rejected an allegorical reading of his work.[137] This tension can help introduce readers to "readerly" and "writerly" interpretations, to tenets of New Criticism, and critical tools from Freudian analysis, such as sublimation, in approaching literary works.[138]
Another approach to critique taken in the classroom has been to propose the insignificance of female characters in the story as sexist. While Bilbo may be seen as a literary symbol of "small folk" of any gender,[139] a gender-conscious approach can help students establish notions of a "socially symbolic text" where meaning is generated by tendentious readings of a given work.[140] By this interpretation, it is ironic that the first authorized adaptation was a stage production in a girls' school.[107]
Adaptations
The Hobbit has been adapted many times for a variety of media, starting with a March 1953 stage production by
See also
- Middle-earth in film
Notes
References
- ^ The Hobbit, ch. 1 "An Unexpected Party". "his woolly toes (neatly brushed)"
- ISBN 978-0-8020-9086-7.
... —prefigure the bourgeois preoccupations of J. R. R. Tolkien's Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.
- ISBN 978-0-933833-42-5.
At the beginning of The Hobbit ... Bilbo Baggins seems little more than a conservative but good-natured innocent.
- ISBN 978-0-7879-7413-8.
But their chief role was to offer sage advice: Merlin as a tutor and counselor to King Arthur; Gandalf through stories and wisdom in his itinerant travels throughout the countryside.
- ISBN 978-0-395-29469-7.
As apt a description of Thorin Oakenshield as of the dwarf-lord of Nogrod; but yet when we see Thorin in person, ... there is a notable addition, a comic pomposity altogether suitable to what Tolkien intends in The Hobbit...
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8120-3523-0.
- ^ a b Tolkien 2003, p. 120
- ISBN 978-1-60413-146-8.
- ^ Oxford Poetry (1915) Blackwells
- ^ Yorkshire Poetry, Leeds, vol. 2, no. 19, October–November 1923
- ^ Rateliff 2007, pp. xxx–xxxi
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 181
- ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #214 to A.C. Nunn, late 1958-early 1959
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 184
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 192
- ^ Tolkien 1937, Inside dustjacket, first flap.
- ^ Tolkien 2003, p. 14
- ^ Tolkien 2003, pp. 378–379
- ^ a b Tolkien 2003, p. 22
- ^ Hammond & Anderson 1993, p. 18
- ^ Hammond & Anderson 1993, pp. 10–11
- ISBN 978-0-87338-824-5.
- ^ Hammond & Anderson 1993, pp. 12–13
- ^ Hammond & Anderson 1993, p. 14
- ^ Rateliff 2007, p. 602
- ^ Hammond & Anderson 1993, p. 20
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1942). The Hobbit. London: The Children's Book Club.
- ^ Tolkien 1988, Illustrations throughout the book; list of translations on pp. 332–333.
- ^ Tolkien 2003, Illustrations throughout the book; list of translations on pp. 386–396.
- ISBN 978-3-11-015455-9.
- ISBN 978-0-9580435-1-9.
- ^
Poveda, Jaume Albero (2003–2004). "Narrative Models in Tolkien's Stories of Middle-earth". Journal of English Studies. 4: 7–22. doi:10.18172/jes.84. Retrieved 9 July 2008.
- ISBN 978-0-7619-4046-3.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 193
- ^ Rateliff 2007, p. 64
- ISBN 978-0-618-39101-1.
- ISBN 978-0-415-30551-8.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #131 to Milton Waldman, late 1951
- ISBN 978-0-313-36282-8.
- ISBN 978-0-19-860115-9.
- ^ St. Clair, Gloriana. "Tolkien's Cauldron: Northern Literature and The Lord of the Rings". Carnegie Mellon. Retrieved 9 July 2008.
- ISBN 978-0-631-21141-9.
- ISBN 978-3-476-01235-7.
- ISBN 978-0-618-19082-9.
- ^ Chance 2001, p. 50
- ^ ISBN 978-0-415-08856-5.
- ISBN 978-0-87972-241-8.
- ISBN 978-0-8120-3523-0.
- ISBN 978-0-618-42251-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-415-92150-3.
- ^ Amison, Anne (July 2006). "An unexpected Guest. influence of William Morris on J. R. R. Tolkien's works". Mythlore (95/96).
- ISBN 978-0-8131-2301-1.
- ^ Drout 2007, pp. 469–479
- ^ Solopova 2009, p. 20
- ^ a b Rateliff 2007, vol. 2 pp. 866–871
- ^ Tolkien 2003, pp. 78
- ^ a b Solopova 2009, pp. 21–22
- ^ a b Fisher, Jason (March 2008). "The History of the Hobbit (review)". Mythlore (101/102).
- ^ St. Clair 2000, p. 39. "Unlike the raven servants of the god of war, Roac is against war with the men of Dale and the Elves. Further, the birds carry the good news of Smaug's fall over the countryside. In The Hobbit, they do not function as scavengers after battle as ravens usually do in medieval Norse and English works."
- ^ ISBN 978-0-261-10401-3.
- ^ a b Carpenter 2023, #25 to the editor of The Observer, printed there on 20 February 1938
- ^ a b Steele, Felicia Jean (2006). "Dreaming of dragons: Tolkien's impact on Heaney's Beowulf". Mythlore (95/96). Retrieved 3 December 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-415-28944-3.
- ^ Solopova 2009, p. 37
- ISBN 978-1-58617-084-4.
- ^ McDonald, R. Andrew; Whetter, K. S. (2006). "'In the hilt is fame': resonances of medieval swords and sword-lore in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings". Mythlore (95/96). Retrieved 3 December 2017.
- ^ Orr, Robert (1994). "Some Slavic Echos in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth". Germano-Slavica. 8: 23–34.
- ^ .
- ^ a b c d Rateliff 2007, pp. 79–80
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7486-1651-0.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8020-3806-7.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #1 to Edith Bratt, October 1914
- ^ Rateliff 2007, p. vol. 2 p. 485
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #306 to Michael Tolkien, drafted in 1967 and sent later; footnote on wargs, quoted by Lobdell 2004, p. 6
- ^ Tolkien 1988, p. 150
- ^ Lobdell 2004, pp. 6–7
- ISBN 978-1-49975-910-5.
- ^ Tolkien 2003, pp. 108
- ^ Drout 2007, pp. 399–400
- ^ Grenby 2008, p. 98
- ISBN 978-0-87548-303-0.
- ISBN 978-0-89870-948-3.
- ^ Chance 2001, pp. 53–56
- .
- ^ Grenby 2008, p. 162
- ISBN 978-0-7425-4400-0.
- ISBN 978-0-313-30845-1.
- ^ Rateliff 2007, pp. 603–609
- ^ ISBN 978-0-618-47885-9.
- ISBN 978-0-395-27628-0.
- ^ Rateliff 2007, p. 534
- ISBN 978-0-87548-303-0.
- ^ Carpenter, Humphrey (23 November 2003). "Review: Cover book: Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth". The Sunday Times.
- ^ a b Croft, Janet Brennan (2004). "'The young perish and the old linger, withering': J. R. R. Tolkien on World War II". Mythlore. 24 (2, article 6).
- ^ a b Croft, Janet Brennan (2002). "The Great War and Tolkien's Memory, an examination of World War I themes in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings". Mythlore. 23 (4, article 2).
- ISBN 978-0-415-92150-3.
- ^ Tolkien 2003, p. 18
- ^ Auden, W. H. (31 October 1954). "The Hero is a Hobbit". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 July 2008.
- ^ Eveleth, Rose (21 September 2012). "The Hobbit You Grew Up With Isn't Quite the Same As the Original, Published 75 Years Ago Today". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, #28 to Stanley Unwin, 4 June 1938
- ^ "FAQ: Did Tolkien win any awards for his books?". The Tolkien Society. 2002. Retrieved 28 June 2008.
- ^ Bird, Elizabeth (7 July 2012). "Top 100 Chapter Book Poll Results". A Fuse #8 Production. Blog. School Library Journal (blog.schoollibraryjournal.com).
- Master of Middle-earth, the Achievement of J. R. R. Tolkien. Penguin Books. pp. 22–23.
- ^ Rateliff 2007, p. xi
- ^ Hammond & Anderson 1993, p. 8
- ^ Hammond & Anderson 1993, pp. 18–23
- ^ a b c Tolkien 2003, pp. 384–386
- ^ Shippey, Tom (20 September 2012). "The Hobbit: What has made the book such an enduring success?". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 27 January 2021. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
Today The Hobbit has sold 100 million copies and been translated into something like fifty languages, including (two of Tolkien's favourites) Icelandic and West Frisian.
- ^ "Tolkien's Hobbit celebrates 75th anniversary". USA Today. 20 September 2012. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
The prelude to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit has been translated in to more than 50 languages and has sold 100 million copies worldwide.
- ^ "JRR Tolkien letter reveals poor sales of The Hobbit". BBC. 16 October 2012. Retrieved 29 March 2022.
Despite his concerns, The Hobbit went on to sell 100 million copies.
- ^ a b Tolkien 2003, p. 23
- ^ a b Carpenter 1977, p. 195
- ^ Riddles in the Dark: The Lost Version (side-by-side comparison of the two versions, archive.org)
- OCLC 781675594.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 215
- ISBN 978-0-395-08254-6.
- ^ Tolkien 2003, pp. 18–23
- ^ Rateliff 2007, pp. 781, 811–12
- ^ Rateliff 2007, p. 765
- ^ Tolkien 2003, p. 218
- ^ Tolkien 1937, p. 63.
- ^ Tolkien 1951, p. 63.
- ^ Tolkien 1966, p. 62.
- ISBN 978-0-04-823238-0.
- ^ Rateliff 2007
- ^ An example, alongside other illustrations can be seen at: Houghton Mifflin
- ^ a b "Tolkien's Hobbit fetches £60,000". BBC News. 18 March 2008. Retrieved 6 June 2008.
- ^ Kean, Danuta (17 January 2017). "The Da Vinci Code code: what's the formula for a bestselling book?". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 August 2019.
- ^ Holden, Jenny (31 July 2008). "The 12 books you must stock". The Bookseller.com. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2012.
- ^ "Hobbit fetches £6,000 at auction". BBC News. 26 November 2004. Retrieved 5 July 2008.
- ^ Walne, Toby (21 November 2007). "How to make a killing from first editions". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 5 July 2008.
- ^ a b Kocher, Paul (1974). Master of Middle-earth, the Achievement of J. R. R. Tolkien. Penguin Books. pp. 31–32.
- ^ ISBN 0-395-18490-8.
- ISBN 978-0-04-823238-0.
- ^ Jones, Nicolette (30 April 2004). "What exactly is a children's book?". The Times. Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2008.
- ^ "The Hobbit". Boys into Books (11–14). Schools Library Association. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
- ^ Carpenter 2023, 131
- ^ Lawrence, Elizabeth T. (1987). "Glory Road: Epic Romance As An Allegory of 20th Century History; The World Through The Eyes of J. R. R. Tolkien". Epic, Romance and the American Dream; 1987 Volume II. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. Retrieved 15 June 2008.
- ISBN 978-0-8131-9030-3.
- ISBN 978-0-7507-0661-2.
- ^ "William L. Snyder". genedeitchcredits. Gene Deitch. 6 January 2012. Archived from the original on 15 January 2012. Retrieved 17 January 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-86554-894-7.
- ^ Williamson, Nicol (1974). The Hobbit (4 LP set). Argo Records.
- ^ Kask, T. J. (December 1977). "NBC's The Hobbit". Dragon. III (6/7): 23.
- ^ "Media Release". Harbourfront Centre. Archived from the original on 7 November 2017. Retrieved 31 October 2017.
- ^ "Box Office History for The Hobbit Movies". The Numbers. Retrieved 26 May 2021.
- ^ Bulbeck, Pip (21 October 2014). "'Hobbit' Trilogy Reportedly Cost $745 Million to Make". The Hollywood Reporter. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-416-36180-3.
- ISBN 978-0-8032-3944-9.
- ^ Uffindell, Matthew; Passey, Chris (May 1984). "Playing The Game" (jpg). Crash. 1 (4): 43. Retrieved 6 July 2008.
- ^ Campbell, Stuart (December 1991). "Top 100 Speccy Games". Your Sinclair. 1 (72): 22. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 6 July 2008.
- ^ "Coronavirus: Andy Serkis reads entire Hobbit live online for charity". BBC News. 9 May 2020.
- ^ The Hobbit.
- ^ The Hobbit – via www.audible.com.
- ^ "Andy Serkis records Lord of the Rings audiobooks for HarperCollins". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 7 September 2021.
Sources
- Primary
- George Allen & Unwin.
- ––– (1951). The Hobbit (2nd ed.). London: George Allen & Unwin.
- ––– (1966). The Hobbit (3rd ed.). Boston: ISBN 978-0-395-07122-9.
- ––– (1951). The Hobbit (2nd ed.). London:
- ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.
- ISBN 978-0-3954-7690-1.
- Tolkien, J. R. R. (2003) [1937]. Anderson, Douglas A. (ed.). The Annotated Hobbit. London: ISBN 978-0-00-713727-5.
- Secondary
- ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.
- ISBN 978-0-618-47885-9.
- ISBN 978-0-4159-6942-0.
- Grenby, Matthew (2008). Children's Literature. ISBN 978-0-618-47885-9.
- ISBN 0-938768-42-5.
- ISBN 978-0-8126-9569-4.
- ISBN 978-0-00-723555-1.
- ISBN 978-0-9816607-1-4.
- St. Clair, Gloriana (2000). "Tolkien's Cauldron: Northern Literature and The Lord of the Rings". Carnegie Mellon University.