The Hobbit

This article is about the book. For other uses, see Hobbit (disambiguation)

The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again

Cover to the 1937 first edition
Author	J. R. R. Tolkien
Cover artist	J. R. R. Tolkien
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Fantasy novel, Children's literature
Publisher	George Allen & Unwin (UK) & Houghton Mifflin Co. (USA)
Publication date	1937
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback) & Audio book
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	The Silmarillion
Followed by	The Lord of the Rings

Template:Middle-earth portal The Hobbit is a children's story written by J. R. R. Tolkien in the tradition of the fairy tale. It was first published on September 21, 1937. While it also stands in its own right, it is often seen as a prelude to Tolkien's monumental fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings (published in 1954 and 1955) and a small part in the history of Middle-earth in The Silmarillion.

Plot summary

The Hobbit is about a young little hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who was just minding his own business, when his occasional visitor Gandalf the Wizard drops in one night. One by one, a whole group of dwarves drop in, and before he knows it, Bilbo has joined their quest to reclaim their kingdom, taken from them by an evil dragon named Smaug. The only problem is that Gandalf has told the dwarves that Bilbo is an expert burglar, but he isn't what they are hoping for.

On this journey Biblo, Gandalf, and the dwarves get into alot of trouble with giant spiders, evil and fierce goblins, and a fire breathing dragon. On the way, Bilbo finds a mysterious ring and he discovers the power within it.

Publications of early drafts

In May and June 2007, HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin published in two parts The History of The Hobbit in the United Kindom. Much like The History of Middle-earth, The History of The Hobbit examines previously unpublished original drafts of The Hobbit with extensive commentary by John Rateliff.

In celebration and recognition of the 70th anniversary of The Hobbit, The History was published on September 21, 2007, exactly 70 years after the initial publication of Tolkien's work.

Joining The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings

In the first edition, Gollum willingly bets his magic ring on the outcome of the riddle game. During the writing of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien saw the need to revise this passage, in order to reflect his new concept of the One Ring and its powerful hold on Gollum. Tolkien tried many different passages in the chapter that would become chapter 2 of The Lord of the Rings, "The Shadow of the Past". Eventually Tolkien decided a rewrite of The Hobbit was in order, and he sent a sample chapter of this rewrite ("Riddles in the Dark") to his publishers. Initially he heard nothing further, but when he was sent galley proofs of a new edition he learned to his surprise the new chapter had been incorporated as the result of a misunderstanding.

In the introduction of The Lord of the Rings, as well as inside "The Shadow of the Past", the differences of the first edition are explained as a "lie" that Bilbo made up because of the One Ring's influence on him, and which he originally wrote down in his book. Inside The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo finally confesses the true story at the Council of Elrond, although Gandalf had deduced the truth earlier. As Tolkien presented himself as the translator of the supposedly historic Red Book of Westmarch, where Bilbo and Frodo's stories were recorded, he further explained the two differing stories in The Hobbit by stating he had originally used Bilbo's original story, but later retranslated the work with the "true story" recorded by Frodo.

This first edition also uses the word "gnome", which Tolkien in his earlier writing had used to refer to the second kindred of the High Elves – the Noldor (or "Deep Elves"). Tolkien thought that "gnome", being derived from the Greek gnosis (knowledge), was a good name for the Noldor he created to be the wisest of the other Elves. But with its English connotations of a small, secretive, and unattractive creature (see garden gnome) Tolkien removed it from later editions.

He made other minor changes in order to conform the narrative to events in The Lord of the Rings and in the ideas he was continually developing for the Quenta Silmarillion.

Editions

Dustcover of the first edition of The Hobbit. This cover was designed by Tolkien himself, as was the binding illustrated at the top of this article.

George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. of London published the first edition of The Hobbit in September 1937. It was illustrated with many black-and-white drawings by Tolkien himself. The original printing numbered a mere 1,500 copies and sold out by December due to enthusiastic reviews. Houghton Mifflin of Boston and New York prepared an American edition to be released early in 1938 in which four of the illustrations would be colour plates. Allen & Unwin decided to incorporate the colour illustrations into their second printing, released at the end of 1937. Despite the book's popularity, wartime conditions forced the London publisher to print small runs of the remaining two printings of the first edition.

As remarked above, Tolkien substantially revised The Hobbit's text describing Bilbo's dealings with Gollum in order to blend the story better into what The Lord of the Rings had become. This revision became the second edition, published in 1951 in both UK and American editions. Slight corrections to the text have appeared in the third (1966) and fourth editions (1978).

New English-language editions of The Hobbit spring up often, despite the book's age, with at least fifty editions having been published to date. Each comes from a different publisher or bears distinctive cover art, internal art, or substantial changes in format. The text of each generally adheres to the Allen & Unwin edition extant at the time it is published.

The remarkable and enduring popularity of The Hobbit expresses itself in the collectors' market. The first printing of the first English language edition rarely sells for under $10,000 US dollars in any whole condition, and clean copies in original dust jackets signed by the author are routinely advertised for over $100,000. Online auction site eBay tends to define the market value for those who collect The Hobbit.

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Over the years, The Hobbit has been adapted for other media multiple times including:

TV

Main article: The Hobbit (film)

The Hobbit, an animated version of the story, produced by Rankin/Bass, debuted as a television movie in the United States in 1977.

The BBC children's television series Jackanory presented an adaptation of The Hobbit in 1979. Unusually for the programme, the adaptation had multiple storytellers.

Film

Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Walsh expressed interest in 1995 in adapting J. R. R. Tolkien's novels. Jackson's pitch was to film The Hobbit, and shoot The Lord of the Rings back-to-back afterward. They met with Saul Zaentz, who bought the film rights to The Lord of the Rings from MGM in the 1970s. However, frustration arose when Jackson's producer, Harvey Weinstein learnt Zaentz had production rights to The Hobbit, but distribution rights still belonged to United Artists. U.A. was on the market, so Weinstein's attempts to buy those rights were unsuccessful. Weinstein asked Jackson to press on with adapting The Lord of the Rings.

Eight years later, New Line Cinema had produced The Lord of the Rings film trilogy after Miramax Films left when they wanted to condense the two planned Rings films into one. However, New Line has a limited time option on The Hobbit. MGM holds the distribution rights to The Hobbit, and expressed interest in teaming up with New Line and Jackson to make the film in September 2006. MGM also expressed interest in another prequel film, set between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

In March 2005, Jackson launched a lawsuit against New Line, claiming he had lost revenue from merchandising, video and computer games releases associated with The Fellowship of The Ring. New Line co-founder Robert Shaye was annoyed with the lawsuit, and said in January 2007 that Jackson would never again direct a film for New Line, accusing Jackson of being greedy. MGM was disappointed with New Line's decision. Sam Raimi expressed interest in taking over the project. In August 2007, after a string of flops, Shaye was trying to repair his working relationship with Jackson. Shaye said, "I really respect and admire Peter and would love for him to be creatively involved in some way in The Hobbit."

Spoken word

BBC Radio 4 broadcast The Hobbit radio drama, adapted by Michael Kilgarriff, in eight parts (4 hours) from September to November 1968, which starred Anthony Jackson as narrator, Paul Daneman as Bilbo and Heron Carvic as Gandalf.

Nicol Williamson's abridged reading of the book was released on four LP records in 1974 by Argo Records.

The American radio theater company The Mind's Eye produced an audio adaptation of "The Hobbit" which was released on six one-hour audio cassettes in 1979.

Robert Inglis adapted and performed a one-man theatre play of The Hobbit. This performance led to him being asked to read/perform the unabridged audiobook for The Lord of the Rings for Recorded Books in 1990. In 1991 he read the unabridged version of The Hobbit.

Comics

A three part comic book adaptation with script by Chuck Dixon and Sean Deming and illustrated by David Wenzel was published by Eclipse Comics in 1989. A reprint collected in one volume was released by Del Rey Books in 2001.

Games

The Hobbit has been the subject of several board games, including "The Lonely Mountain" (1984), "The Battle of Five Armies" (1984), and "The Hobbit Adventure Boardgame" (1997) all published by Iron Crown Enterprises.

Games Workshop released a "Battle of Five Armies" (2005) tabletop wargame using 10mm figures, based on their Warmaster rules.

Several computer and video games, both official and unofficial, have been based on the story. One of the first was The Hobbit, an award winning (Golden Joystick Award for Strategy Game of the Year 1983) computer game developed in 1982 by Beam Software and published by Melbourne House for most computers available at the time, from the more popular computers such as the ZX Spectrum, and the Commodore 64, through to the Dragon 32 and Oric computers. By arrangement with publishers, a copy of the novel was included with each game sold.

Sierra Entertainment published a platform game titled The Hobbit in 2003 for Windows PCs, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube. A similar version was also published for the Game Boy Advance.

Influences on other works

• Led Zeppelin's song "Misty Mountain Hop" contains references to The Hobbit, whilst other songs are thought to be influenced by The Lord of the Rings.
• "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins", performed by Leonard Nimoy as part of his 1968 Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy album, is the most pertinent because it recounts the book's storyline in its two minutes. The ballad's music video became a minor Internet phenomenon in the early 2000s when The Lord of the Rings film trilogy was released.
• Another well-known reference is Blind Guardian's The Bard's Song: The Hobbit.
• A trance track was released in 1995 by Dynamix Maniax, featuring the title "Calling Middle-earth", containing a muffled sample from the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit.
• The Canadian rock trio Rush memorializes the elven refuge of Rivendell in a song of the same name on their 1975 album Fly by Night.
• In the episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog "Journey to the Center of Nowhere", Courage's master Muriel is held captive by three large eggplant monsters that roughly resemble trolls. The eggplants argue amongst themselves over how to cook Muriel, whether they should fry her, grill her, bake her, or sit on her until she becomes jelly, a scene taken directly from The Hobbit.

See also

• The Quest of Erebor
• English-language editions of The Hobbit
• Early American editions of The Hobbit

External links

• The official Tolkien website.
• collection of edition covers, 1937 – 2005
• Every UK edition of The Hobbit
• Every Dutch edition of The Hobbit
• Hobbits around the globe - gallery
• Let the Hobbit Happen
• The Unofficial Hobbit Fan Site
• History of the Hobbit: An essential resource book for the forthcoming movie adaptation of The Hobbit
• The Hobbit Movie