Our Sponsor Sideshow Send us News
Lord of the Rings Tolkien
Search Tolkien
Lord of The RingsTheOneRing.net - Forged By And For Fans Of JRR Tolkien
Lord of The Rings Serving Middle-Earth Since The First Age

Lord of the Rings Movie News - J.R.R. Tolkien

  Main Index   Search Posts   Who's Online   Log in
The One Ring Forums: Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
Tolkien and the Writing of 'The HOBBIT' . . .

chauvelin2000
Bree

Mar 10 2015, 4:52pm

Post #1 of 3 (1318 views)
Shortcut
Tolkien and the Writing of 'The HOBBIT' . . . Can't Post


TOLKIEN: A Brief Sketch of Middle-earth's Myth-maker . . .



John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (from the German tollkühn 'rash-bold' or foolhardy; born 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein 'fountain of flowers', South Africa, where he was bitten by a tarantula) was educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham (1903-11); graduated in June 1915 from Exeter College, Oxford (where his friends called him 'Tollers'); fought in the Great War (1916-17); worked on the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary (1918-20); and taught as a Professor of English language at Leeds University until 1925, when he was elected Rawlison and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925-1945) at Oxford. Until his retirement from that prestigious university, he researched and taught as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature (1945-1959). Tolkien, age 83, died on 2 September 1973, following a brief illness. He was buried beside his wife in Wolvercote cemetery, and their gravestone reads: 'Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889-1971; John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973.

Tolkien's early life was 'a succession of bereavements [death stole both of his parents, and many of his friends in The Great War, where he witnessed the many horrors of mechanized combat and came to know that terrible powers were loose in the world] that created in him a deep nostalgia for the past [and] rewoke in [him] memories of a lost Eden ... Though Eden, he remembered, was possible, and God, he believed, was provident [a conviction instilled in him by his angel mother Mabel, to whom Tolkien felt utterly indebted for having started him on his path not only of a love for language, but also of deep, abiding faith], he saw his century as a dark age, a century that had ceased to believe in good and evil and had lost its grip on the healing power of myth. Barely twenty, he resolved to invent the necessary myths for his beloved England [while also finding personal consolation from painful loss in imaginative realms, for the dark realm of the real world offered little] ...

Marrying young, to Edith Bratt ... Tolkien lived an intense double life ... In [his] public role he was a hard-working teacher and scholar who made important contributions to the study of medieval language and literature, a conservative academic husband and father concerned about the family income and his children's health [including the spiritual aspect, for Tolkien's pious devotion and faith translated to raising a growing family to share his deep convictions].

But behind this façade was the fantasy poet, an obsessive midnight embroiderer of unfashionable tales in prose and verse about elves, dragons, and lost kingdoms. Though his fantasies did not become famous until the 1950s, Tolkien had been working and reworking epic prototypes of them, writing to please himself, for some forty years by that time. The mythic tales of Tolkien the wounded medievalist — written at first with little hope of reward in his own struggle with the symbols of healing and salvation — have, of course, become classics. But these tales might never have escaped his desk drawer had not one of them [been published to the world], a bedtime story for his children...' (William H. Green, The Hobbit: A Journey Into Maturity [1995], pp. 3-4; Devin Brown, The Christian World of THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 19, 21).
.


† Mythos (Greek: 'Story') — Myths are stories that explain through value judgments. 'Every human culture has its mythology [that relates] the individual to God, to the cosmos, to other people, and to himself ... First passed on by word of mouth ... after centuries, when a culture has acquired writing, [its mythology] can be gathered into documents ... The Bible of Judaism and Christianity is the principal mythic documentary collection for Tolkien's part of space-time ... All around the globe mythologies bear striking resemblances, as well as their intriguing differences ... This may be because all peoples ... are talking about the same thing ... The single theme of all mythologies is [seemingly] a transcendent matter ... Tolkien's Western European culture derives mostly from two others, each with its mythology: the Graeco-Roman or classical, and the Judeo-Christian ... The word myth does not indicate the stories' truth or falsehood [Indeed, Tolkien himself would maintain that, far from being lies, myths may be profound vehicles for communicating truth - see Tree and Leaf, 1964 rev. 1988]. The use of 'myth' to mean false is a common debased usage [for the word which does imply 'good story but not factual' is legend, although legends often crystallize around factual characters; mythologies often include legendary material among their stories]. As Christianity grew with Roman culture, the mingled classical and Hebrew streams flowed north and west into the territory of a third mythology, the Germanic or Norse ... Tolkien, having learned classical mythology and been moved by Norse, and finding the Finnish [Kalevala, 1835 / 1849, a mythology on the brink of being lost, reconstructed by Elias Lönnrot] gathered by a modern lover of [folktales], wished 'that we [the English] had more of it left [which native mythology had been practically obliterated by the Norman Invasion and Conquest of 1066 AD] — something of the same sort that belonged to the English'. It came into his mind 'to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the level of the romantic fairy-story ... which I could dedicate simply: to England; to my country'. He wanted it 'redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West...). The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint [such as from the pens and brushes of Alan Lee and John Howe] and music [such inspired compositions as from Howard Shore] and drama [such ingenious translations to the stage or motion-picture screen, as from Peter Jackson & Co.]...' [This Tolkien did, and he was not alone, for he] had company in missing a mythology for England. The seventeenth-century poet John Milton had decided the land needed an epic, and set out to write the 'Arthuriad', from the tales of the legend-crowned king. But he found the material cramped his style, so instead wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, about [the premordial 'war in heaven',] the fall of man and Jesus' life ...

Tolkien, like Milton, saw that the rich Arthurian material, much as he enjoyed it [though it was irredeemably tainted by French romanticism], would not do for a mythology. For the Arthur cycle as we have it is explicitly Christian: set in Christian times, and usually told by Christian writers to Christian audiences. Christian times cannot serve as the setting for a mythology comparable to the classical or Norse; the relation between man and God, and therefore between man and the rest of creation, has been changed too drastically. Mythology sets the little in relation to the large: shows the human individual small beside the cosmos, demiurgic powers, and the Creator. But according to Christian belief, God has done the opposite: put the large in relation to the little. The Creator, bypassing all things else, made Himself a human individual ['And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth ... All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men...' John 1:3-4, 14]. This demands a shift in the human race's attention: our proper study really is man ... not such a trivial subject as we sometimes feel. As the girl in the folksong says, 'If the King's Son loves me, I'm not so ugly as the soldiers said'. Our race has been given transcendent importance. In joining this race of creatures, the supreme Being of eternity involved [Himself] in this world's time: in history. Historic time gains an importance in stories of the Christian era which it lacks in mythologies ... Though Christianity still involves myths, symbols, and non-human beings, now history, literal objects, and human persons matter more. So a writer composing a mythic account would have trouble setting it in the Christian age because first, it would collide with known history and second, it would reflect relations among mankind, God, and the rest of creation which have been superceded by Jesus' life. Milton and Tolkien seem both to have perceived [this, and so] quit the Christian court of Arthur for epochs long past...' (Ivor & Deborah Rogers, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Critical Biography [1980], pp. 28-32, 129n; Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces [1949 rev. 2008]; Masks of God: Creative Mythology [1968]; Charles Moseley rightly confirms: 'Tolkien was not setting out to write 'Literature', with all that suggests of modern assumptions [but was, it appears] with growing certainty ... setting out to write mythology...' J. R. R. Tolkien [1997], p. 52; emphasis mine).

The Norman Invasion and Conquest of England — with this 11th-century advent's resultant influx of French and Latin learning and the destroying of English books, the country for centuries was largely bereft of its own 'pure' stories, folktales, and legends. Tolkien wanted to give his country, his homeland, a collection of 'lost legends' and epic stories similar to what it once had — tales from his imagined 'far past' world reaching to the first beginnings of English history (Perry C. Bramlett, I Am in Fact a Hobbit: An Introduction to the Life and Work of J. R. R. Tolkien [2003], p. 164n; see also Tom Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century [2000], pp. 231-32).



The Writing of THE HOBBIT, or There and Back Again
(1930-33 / 1936-37 / 1944-47 / 1953-60 / 1965-66)

'The actual beginning [of writing THE HOBBIT] — though it's not really the beginning, but the actual flashpoint I remember very clearly. I can still see the corner of my house in 20 Northmoor Road where it happened. I had an enormous pile of exam papers there. Marking school examinations in the summertime is very labourious and unfortunately also boring. And I remember picking up a paper and actually findingI nearly gave an extra mark for it; an extra five marks, actuallythere was one page of this particular paper that was left blank. Glorious! Nothing to read. So I scribbled on it, I can't think why, In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit . . . ~ Tolkien in Oxford, BBC Television, 1968


'Edith has gone to bed and the house is in darkness when
[Tolkien] gets home. He builds up the fire in the study stove and fills his pipe. He ought, he knows, to do some more work on his lecture notes for the next morning, but he cannot resist taking from a drawer the half-finished manuscript of a story that he is writing to amuse himself and his children. It is probably, he suspects, a waste of time; certainly if he is going to devote any attention to this sort of thing it ought to be to THE SILMARILLION. But something draws him back night after night to this amusing little taleat least it seems to amuse the boys. He sits down at the desk, fits a new relief nib to his dip pen (which he prefers to a fountain pen), unscrews the ink bottle, takes a sheet of old examination paper ... and begins to write: 'When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright!' . . . We will leave him now. He will be at his desk until half past one, or two o'clock, or perhaps even later, with only the scratching of his pen to disturb the silence, while around him Northmoor Road sleeps . . . ' ~ Tolkien: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter, p. 120-21

'Tolkien's letters are full of references that make it clear that almost all his creative writing was done not in term-time but during his too-brief vacations between academic semesters, and indeed his son Christopher confirms
(private communication) that this was his father's usual pattern of composition. The physical appearance of the manuscript also argues for periodic bursts of rapid writing . . .' ~ History of THE HOBBIT, p. xxi

'The manuscript of THE HOBBIT suggests that the actual writing of the main part of the story
[Phases II & III, below] was done over a comparatively short period of time: the ink, paper, and handwriting style are consistent, the pages are numbered consecutively, and there are almost no chapter divisions. It would also appear that Tolkien wrote the story fluently and with little hesitation . . . ' ~ Tolkien: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter, p. 177-78

'As we shall see, there are a great many changes made to the rough draft in the process of writing, and many more afterwards. Parts of the manuscript show signs of having been written in great haste, while other sections are careful fair copy ... several sharp breaks ... occur in the Ms. where the handwriting, names of characters, and paper all change. Large sections are consistent in writing style and the paper used, only to have no less than three sudden and marked changes in writing paper and handwriting, the first and last of which
[see MAJOR BREAKS, below] almost certainly mark the long hiatuses Tolkien describes in his letter to The Observer [printed in its 20 February 1938 Sunday issue, in which he concludes: 'Finally, I present the future researcher with a little problem. The tale halted in the telling for about a year, at two separate points: where are they? But probably that would have been discovered anyway...'].' ~ History of THE HOBBIT, p. xviii, xxi-xxii, and p. 858, Appendix II: Tolkien's Letter to The Observer'The Hobyahs'

'THE HOBBIT is now nearly finished, and the publishers clamouring for it . . . ' ~ Tolkien: A Biography, Humphrey Carpenter, p. 180




THE HOBBIT: Chronology of Composition

PHASE I of the WRITING (Pages 1-12 of the original Manuscript / Typescript, to midway of Chapter I) c. Summer 1930

The Pryftan (Dragon) Fragment (only 6 surviving manuscript pages of an incomplete draft = pp. 25-32 of THE HOBBIT, First Edition) ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxii, 1-5, 5-6n

MAJOR BREAK in the Manuscript (between pp. 12 & 13, midway of Chapter I, marked by a change of paper)

The Bladorthin (Wizard) Typescript (12 pages typed on Tolkien's Hammond typewriter, replacing earliest manuscript draft before its missing pages were lost) ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxii, 28

PHASE II of the WRITING (Pages 13-167 of the Manuscript, picking up at Bladorthin end-point to third-way of Chapter XV, after writing had reached the Ravenhill scene) c. 1931-32

Pages 13-118
(midway of Ch I - early in Ch IX) on good-quality 'foolscap' paper, using both sides (Tolkien's paper of choice for both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) Includes Tolkien's 'First Outline' — a brief, sketchy list of plot reminders jotted down on a loose sheet of paper, recording episodes and details for upcoming chapters — and the most significant portion (A - B) of his extensive, composite, and multi-layered Plot Notes (A - F, including the 'little bird' outline [E]); at the very beginning of Plot Notes A, Tolkien confidently jots his intention to change the names of his head-dwarf, wizard, and were-bear to Thorin Oakenshield (with his cognomen or epithet already present), Gandalf, and Beorn, respectively; he then tentatively makes the change to the wizard's name in the Plot Notes, only to revert back to 'Bladorthin' again within six lines; not until the end of Phase II does he finally make the name-changes, first to 'Thorin' (as the Chief dwarf tumbles from his barrel at Lake Town, no doubt because retaining 'Gandalf' offended Tolkien's sense of decorum to have a dwarf named 'elf' — Gandalf = 'wand-elf'), then to 'Gandalf' (at the Secret Door on Durin's Day as the dwarves clamor for a key and Thorin references the wizard who gave him his father's map); for the name-change to 'Beorn', as well as 'The Enchanted Stream' interpolation for 'Mirkwood' Ch VIII, see Phase III below (History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxii-xxiii, 67-70, 74n, 237, 248-49n, 293, 297, 300-302, 323-24n, 347, 361, 366-67, 379, 437, 444n, 455-59, 472, 476-77, 482, 497-99, 629, 679)

MAJOR BREAK in the Manuscript (between pp. 118 & 119, early in Chapter IX, at the Company's capture by wood-elves, marked by a change of paper); after Chapter VIII was written, and at some point during this break in 1931, perhaps right before he starts up the story again, Tolkien jots down Plot Notes B (which in its final state becomes the Plot Notes B/C/D/B sequence — the original last page of the earliest layer being renumbered when Plot Notes D was inserted into the composite, multi-layered document, indicating that the page was still intended to outline the story's end)

Pages 118-167 (early in Ch IX - third-way of Ch XV, after writing had reached the Ravenhill scene) on slightly poorer quality paper (unlined backs of lined sheets from student-exam booklets; in the last 35 pages, during the composition of Chapter XI in 1932, when Plot Notes C were sketched out, Thorin [< Gandalf] becomes the Chief dwarf, and Gandalf [< Bladorthin], the wizard; Tolkien changed the manner of Smaug's demise (from Bilbo to Bard the dragon-slayer) after Chapter XII, at the beginning of Chapter XIII's draft, striking through the last page of Plot Notes C and underscoring in the left margin: 'Dragon killed in the battle of the Lake'; Plot Notes D were jotted down during the composition of Chapter XIII, right after the dragon's death; Plot Notes E ['Little Bird'] was the final piece of text unambiguously associated with the Phase II storyline — in these hasty jottings, written just before Tolkien broke off to go back to the start and create his First Typescript [see Major Break and Phase III, below], we see how events of manuscript Chapter XVb: 'King Bard' would have unfurled had the chapter's Phase II text not been abandoned — these plot notes were inserted in the Ravenhill scene, at the story-point where Bilbo and the dwarves learn [from the raven Roäc Carcson] of the approaching elven and human armies, which point marks the end of the Phase II composition) ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxiii, 316, 361, 366-67, 379, 495, 497-99, 512-13, 549-50, 556-57, 568-69, 618, 620, 626-627

MAJOR BREAK in the Manuscript (following p. 167, third-way of Ch XV, marked by a change of paper) of no more than a year's length, during which time Tolkien returned to the story's beginning to create the First Typescript (laboriously putting his story into a legible form that could be shared with others, History of THE HOBBIT, p. 635: see below), then commencing his Manuscript again, in Dec 1932, to finally complete the book (see below)

PHASE III of the WRITING (187 pages of original First Typescript (pp. 1-129) / Manuscripts (pp. 1-45 / a-m) = Tolkien's 'Home Manuscript' Chapters I through XIX, to end of book, which composite typescript-manuscript Tolkien circulated among his friends over the intervening years between the tale's initial writing [finished in the first weeks of 1933, but finally completed circa September 1936] but before its submission for publication in early October 1936) c. 1932-33, 1936

  • First Typescript (Ch I - XII & part of Ch XIV only [up to Smaug's death], consisting of 129 single-spaced pages typed on Tolkien's Hammond typewriter [with songs in italics] before Dec 1932); both unfinished story and typing, however, extend to Summer 1936 (when Tolkien's publishers asked him to submit the final story), in preparation for the book's publication, to include also Ch XIII ('fair copy' manuscript, see below), the conclusion of Ch XIV, and Ch XV - XIX (typed in summer-autumn 1936 from the 1932-33 'story conclusion' manuscript, see below) = a complete Tolkien's 'Typescript for Printers', bearing for the first time the sub-title, or There and Back Again; Plot Notes F, a collection of miscellaneous notes, reminders by Tolkien to himself of loose plot-points to be addressed in the story's wrapping-up, written in 1932 at the start of Phase III; 'The Enchanted Stream' interpolated text to Ch VIII comes from this original typescript; Tolkien's were-bear becomes Beorn [< Medwed] (on the complex name-origins of 'Beorn', see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 231-32, 247, 256-260, 281-82; although anticipated previously in Plot Notes A, B and F, the first name-change occurrence in the actual body of the text doesn't occur until the 'flashback' retelling of Beorn's sudden appearance at the Battle of the Five Armies) ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxiii-xxv, 293, 301, 347, 366, 516, 547, 550, 554-55n, 577, 618, 627-30, 631-635, 636n, 637-38, 679

  • Manuscript (to finish the storywriting, picking up at First Typescript's original end-point in Ch XIV [Smaug's death] through to final Ch XIX, consisting of 45 hand-written pages on good quality 'foolscap' paper that complete the story; written Dec 1932 - Jan 1933, with revisions made in ink, and later in pencil, to prepare for both a complete 'Typescript for Printers' [see above], and later, a second typescript [see below]) ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 547, 550, 554-55n, 631-35, 636n, 637-638

  • Manuscript Fair Copy (Ch XIII only [Bilbo and the dwarves' adventures inside the Mountain], consisting of 13 hand-written pages (pp. a-m) on good quality paper inserted into the First Typescript: this was done because Ch XIII and XIV were, for the most part, flipped in their story-position sequence, essentially making of Ch XIV one long flashback to 'two days before ... when Smaug had burst forth in rage [to attack Lake Town]') ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxiii, 577, 594-95, 637-638

  • Second Typescript (Ch I - XIX, filled with many errors by 16-year-old, recently hand-injured Michael Tolkien, but made ostensibly to create a cleaner copy for the publisher, Allen & Unwin, while also incorporating all of Tolkien's hand-made changes (in black ink) to the original typescript; due, however, to Michael's many new typing errors, those very corrections had then of necessity to be transferred again to the second typescript, but solely for the purpose of retaining a 'safe copy' in order to reconstruct the original work should that ever be necessary, were ever Tolkien's 'Typescript for Printers' to be lost or destroyed) ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxii-xxv, xxxvi-xxxvii, 83, 229-230, 293-302, 361-378, 495-503, 568-576, 626-630, 633-638



  • 'THE HOBBIT,' wrote Tolkien from his Merton College office on 27 July 1972 (when he donated his most prized piece of furniture 'in memory of my wife, Edith Mary' to the charity Help the Aged), 'was entirely produced: written, typed, and illustrated ... on this desk ... bought for me by my wife in 1927'. The desk, situated before the south-facing windows of Tolkien's ground-floor study at 20 Northmoor Road, Oxford, England (where the Tolkien family lived from January 1930 through early 1947) — which Tolkien 'chiefly ... used for literary work' until Edith's death in 1971 — was purchased in 1987 by Wheaton College's Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton, Illinois, where it is housed today, on public display). It was the Oxford professor's 'hope that its sale may help this Charity to house some old people of Britain in peace and comfort'. On this same desk Tolkien would also write the manuscript drafts of the four 'books' (III-VI) that would comprise volumes II and III of THE LORD OF THE RINGS (published 1954-55), including much of that seminal work's revisions, 'until the last words of the Tale were reached in 1949.'

    The 1937 Hobbit
    [Tolkien's 1936 First Typescript of THE HOBBIT, written from c. Summer 1930 to 1933 (extended in 1936), is submitted on 3 October 1936 to publishers ALLEN & UNWIN, and thence to the printer, UNWIN BROTHERS. A First Page Proof was then sent to Tolkien (20 & 24 February 1937) to read through and mark up — the resultant changes to which (sent back 11 March) were then carefully copied by the printer onto a second First Page Proof which the printer then (retaining Tolkien's original proof for reference) returned to the publisher. A Second Page Proof that incorporated those changes was then sent to Tolkien (early April) for last-chance corrections to printer-mistakes, typescript-errors, or for last-minute changes (sent back April 13; Tolkien possessed, as is well known, an impeccable attention to detail, not only for writing, spelling, and grammar in general, but also for spotting potential contradictions in the text, as well as a gift for summary and replacing problematic passages with new text that took up exactly the same amount of space as the lines it replaced, thus avoiding the costly resetting of subsequent pages). All of which, of course, leads to initial printing of the book in June 1937 (Tolkien received his first copy on 13 August), and finally, to a seminal moment in the history of fantasy literaturepublication on 21 September 1937 of the 'First Edition' of J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT.]

    On 4 December 1936, Allen & Unwin employee Susan Dagnall — who had 'discovered' Tolkien's 'frightfully good' hobbit-story manuscript through a tip from her Oxford friend, Elaine Griffiths, Tolkien's former graduate student (tipped that she visit Tolkien and request to borrow and read it, rather than return to the London publisher empty-handed without Griffiths' unfinished Clark Hall Beowulf-'updating' project that was to have been delivered to Dagnall) — asked Tolkien for a short passage describing the book for the publisher's 1937 summer catalog (History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 634-35, 693-94, 702n). Tolkien supplied her with this before December 10, and not only did it appear in print as indicated but it was also used on the front flap of the dust jacket of the published book:



    If you care for journeys there and back, out of the comfortable Western world, over the edge of the Wild, and home again, and can take an interest in a humble hero (blessed with a little wisdom and a little courage and considerable good luck), here is the record of such a journey and such a traveller. The period is the ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men, when the famous forest of Mirkwood was still standing, and the mountains were full of danger. In following the path of this humble adventurer, you will learn by the way (as he did) — if you do not already know all about these things — much about trolls, goblins, dwarves, and elves, and get some glimpses into the history and politics of a neglected but important period.

    For Mr. Bilbo Baggins visited various notable persons; conversed with the dragon, Smaug the Magnificent; and was present, rather unwillingly, at the Battle of Five Armies. This is all the more remarkable, since he was a hobbit. Hobbits have hitherto been passed over in history and legend, perhaps because they as a rule preferred comfort to excitement. But this account, based on his personal memoirs, of the one exciting year in the otherwise quiet life of Mr. Baggins will give you a fair idea of this estimable people, now (it is said) becoming rather rare. They do not like noise.


    Tolkien's publishers added to the dust-cover blurb of THE HOBBIT's second impression that:

    THE HOBBIT has riddles, runes, and Icelandic dwarves; and though its world of magic and mythology is its own, a new land of lore, it has the atmosphere of the ancient North ... A battery of favourable reviews ... show that leading critics ... have sided with the publishers in claiming that THE HOBBIT is a work of genius. ~ Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 15, 25n



    Beyond riddles (see Chapter V, 'Riddles in The Dark'), THE HOBBIT, as published over the years, additionally contained 16 poems, 2 maps (Thror's Map, Wilderland), 8 black and white illustrations (made after the holidays of December 1936 but before mid-January 1937) and 5 in color (four of which were made in mid-July, and the last finished by mid-August, 1937; but this Tolkien-illustration standard took some time to evolve, and the surviving artwork associated with the book numbers around 70 pieces). Tolkien also illustrated the book's original dust jacket. ~ Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 5, 13, 24n

    Charles Moseley has noted that the 'substantial number of illustrations' that Tolkien made for his work were 'done in strong unshaded colours, as in medieval manuscripts and heraldry. Some (as in The Hobbit) illustrated incidents where the picture of, for example, Bilbo and the Trolls saves much verbal detailing; and Tolkien's interest in articulating his world naturally led to its mapping. Those maps are not mere decoration: they have a deliberate ... likeness-yet-unlikeness to the configuration of Western Europe, a suggestion that this is and is not our world. We are told in several places that great cataclysms have changed the face of Middle-earth, not least the Atlantean drowning of Númenor. Those maps, endpapers or fold-out maps placing the narratives they enclose in the world untold in the book, suggest, as does the unfinished time-travel story, The Lost Road, that England and Middle-earth are in some way related in historical time and space...' ~ J. R. R. Tolkien [1997], p. 51; emphasis mine

    Only some 17,000 copies of the First Edition of THE HOBBIT were ever offered for sale (first printing Sept 1937: 1,500; second printing Dec 1937: 2,300 — 423 of which were destroyed in a warehouse fire during the Battle of Britain; third printing late-1942: 1,500, along with a simultaneous Children's Book Club edition early-1943: 3,000; fourth printing 1946-47, the last to use the original text: 4,000; and the first American edition February 1938: 5,000 — for a grand total of 17,300, less the 423 destroyed before distribution, for an actual total of 16,877 books) — a mere fraction compared with the 35,000 copies of the first paperback edition (Puffin, 1961), not to mention the vast numbers of Ballantine, Allen & Unwin, Houghton Mifflin, and HarperCollins editions sold since the early-60s. ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 165, 185n

    C. S. Lewis, Tolkien's dear friend and colleague, was the first published reviewer of THE HOBBIT. He wrote that this book by 'a professor at play ... admits us to a world of its own — a world that seems to have been going on before we stumbled into it but which, once found by the right reader, becomes indispensable to him. Its place is with Alice ... The Wind in the Willows.... It must be understood that this is a children's book only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery. Alice is read gravely by children and with laughter by grown-ups; The Hobbit, on the other hand, will be funniest to its youngest readers, and only years later, at a tenth or twentieth reading, will they begin to realize what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its own way so true. Prediction is dangerous: but The Hobbit may well prove a classic...' (Times Literary Supplement, 2 October 1937; 'Of all the things Lewis said in [this earliest of reviews], his closing statement — one that may have seemed quite bold back in 1937 — proved to be the most accurate of all...' Devin Brown, The Christian World of THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 9-10; emphasis mine).

    L.A.G. Strong agreed: 'It is dangerous to say that a book is really original, but in this case I risk it gladly. The Hobbit should become a classic...' (Spectator, 3 December 1937). And in the United States, after the American first edition was published in late-February 1938, the reviews (prefiguring its great success in that country) were no less favorable. Harry Lorin Bisse called the book 'a brilliantly told modern fairy story' (Commonweal, 2 December 1938). And Anne T. Eaton, that well-known figure of children's literature, wrote: 'This is one of the most freshly original and delightfully imaginative books for children that have appeared in many a long day.... [There are] forests that suggest those of William Morris's prose romances. Like Morris's countries, Wilderland is Faërie, yet it has an earthly quality, the scent of trees, drenching rains and the smell of woodfires.... The songs of the dwarves and elves are real poetry, and since the author is fortunate enough to be able to make his own drawings, the illustrations are a perfect accompaniment to the text' (New York Times Book Review, 13 March 1938; emphasis mine).

    THE HOBBIT went on to win the New York Herald Tribune award in April 1938 (among the award judges was Stephen Vincent Benét); Tolkien was notified on 25 April of the $250 win via cablegram by a representative of Houghton Mifflin Company (opening the notification at the breakfast table, his children remember him passing the enclosed cheque for the then-formidable sum to wife Edith, so that she could pay an outstanding doctor's bill with it).

    That the book would have tremendous 'staying power' was forecast not only by Lewis and Strong, but also in March 1950 by Marcus S. Crouch, who predicted that THE HOBBIT 'seems to me ... to possess in a high degree some of the qualities which make for endurance. I know of no children's book published in the last twenty-five years of which I could more confidently predict that it will be read in the twenty-first century (Junior Bookshelf, March 1950). ~ Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 17-18, 20-21, 22, 25n



    Post-publication Development — to better suit Tolkien's evolving conception of Middle-earth and the role that Bilbo's adventure played in it


    PHASE IV of the WRITING (Recasting the Chapter V encounter with Gollum [see below], to harmonize that character's actions with the narrative-content of the then-unpublished, and indeed still-unfinished The Lord of the Rings — and it was a veritable tour-de-force, perhaps the most famous scene Tolkien ever wrote: see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxv, 729-32, 820)

    The 1947 Hobbit
    'Second Edition' of THE HOBBIT (drafted in 1944, sent to Allen & Unwin in 1947, and published in 1951, the material for this edition exists in three states: 10 sheets of fair copy manuscript [1944], followed by 6 pages of single-spaced typescript [1944 or 1947], followed by 8 typeset sheets, or 16 pages [1950], from Allen & Unwin showing how the new material looked when typeset and allowing Tolkien to proofread the changes. They represent, respectively, Tolkien's manuscript of the rewritten passages; his 'home copy' of the typescript of this material that he sent to Allen & Unwin; and Allen & Unwin's page proofs of the changed sections returned to Tolkien for proofing. The greatly expanded encounter with Gollum would add exactly 5 extra pages to the book's length (per Tolkien's precise economy-of-words vigilance and his sensitivity to his publishers' concerns during those difficult days of a paper-shortage war era by calculating his new phrasing to economically 'fit' the book's already carefully established pagination). Attached with the new Gollum-story typescript pages sent to Allen & Unwin in 1947 was a sheet listing errata [see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 749-751n] that Tolkien had discovered and wished his publishers, adhering to his corrections and alterations, to fix in the next printing, as was their usual practice. And finally, he also prepared for the book's fifth printing of this 'Second Edition' [1951] a short prefatory note to the reader (see below, and History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 751-756n) to explain why this printing (which at last included the revised Gollum story) differed from those that had gone before; both the preface (which exists also in a long version as fair copy manuscript and single-spaced typescript) and the expanded story appear thus for the first time in this printing.)

    PHASE V of the WRITING (Returning as he did to concerns for 'The Quest of Erebor' prologue* that he had written in 1953-54 to better inform his Middle-earth story of the Third Age (as presented in THE HOBBIT and LOTR), Tolkien set out to re-write in the style of THE LORD OF THE RINGS — though he did not finish — the entire THE HOBBIT, wisely abandoning this new draft, however, at the start of Chapter III. Even so, this previously unpublished material gives a fascinating glimpse into a radically different approach to the story that helps its readers appreciate it as it stands all the more, while also providing some interesting and hitherto unknown details about Bilbo's day-by-day itinerary in his journey from Hobbiton to Rivendell: see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxv-xxvi, 731, 763-67, 791, 803, 809-812, 813, 820, 825, 827, 830, 832, 835, 837.)

    The 1960 Hobbit (internally imposed by personal compulsion, but abandoned)
    The attempt, ultimately aborted, in what we here call the Fifth Phase of Tolkien's composition, to bring the earlier book into precise harmony with its sequel by a complete re-envisioning and recasting of the old story of Bilbo's adventure (authentic but narratively inaccurate) to agree in minute detail with the new one of Frodo's quest (both authentic and serially accurate) — that material (because of the revision's abortion) remaining unpublished until 2007 (see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 765-838n). It consists of but the first two chapters (and only the beginning of a third) with additional time-lines and itinerary, of the planned retelling.

    PHASE VI of the WRITING (As is infamously known, the changes made to THE HOBBIT in what has been called the Sixth Phase were actually brought about in 1965 by external pressures felt by Tolkien's publishers when Ace Books of New York announced its intention to publish an unauthorized version of THE LORD OF THE RINGS in paperback (to take advantage of a loophole in copyright law), but Tolkien took the occasion as an opportunity, ironically enough, for the correction of some errors and the incorporation of some additions and fixes to that work's prequel that he had settled upon during his work on the 1960 Hobbit. The material that he provided Allen & Unwin for the 1966 edition was the last work Tolkien ever did on THE HOBBIT. Thus, the 'Third Edition' [1966] came about, strangely enough, at his publisher's request that he revise the book's sequel, since the appearance of the unauthorized Ace paperbacks of THE LORD OF THE RINGS in the summer of 1965 (with a subsequent public outcry over the 'moral piracy' of Tolkien's never having given permission to Ace, who failed in its 'exploitation' to pay Tolkien any royalties) meant that Houghton Mifflin and now Ballantine Books needed him to produce for LOTR a revised authorized text in order to belatedly assert the American copyright (which it failed to do in the first place): but Tolkien revised THE HOBBIT instead (and the 'new' American edition of LOTR went unrevised, apart from Tolkien's personal appeal to readers to buy only that edition: for usually a paperback publisher would abide by the conventions of international copyright law and pay royalties in good faith). Notwithstanding, the resulting international publicity over these various publications and the attendant controversy started the Tolkien 'boom' in America (Tolkien-book sales skyrocketed), which spread to England, and Tolkien and his books became internationally known (with Ace paying out at last a substantial, full-royalties check to Tolkien to amend its HOBBIT-sequel scandal); see History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxvi, 731, 765, 810-812, 837; Ivor & Deborah Rogers, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Critical Biography [1980], p. 26; Perry C. Bramlett, I Am in Fact a Hobbit: An Introduction to the Life and Work of J. R. R. Tolkien [2003], pp. 20, 63-65)

    The 1966 Hobbit (externally imposed by unauthorized foreign publishing circumstance)
    'Third Edition' of THE HOBBIT published in 1966 as an officially endorsed or 'authorized' edition, to help address the issue of copyright infringement by American publisher Ace Books which in 1965 had produced an unauthorized edition of the book's sequel, THE LORD OF THE RINGS. With this, in part, externally imposed edition, however, only minor changes were made to the established text, and for the most part Tolkien refrained from making any major changes that may have fulfilled his intent for the 1960 edition. The fact that the 1966 publication changes failed to redress several 'time-line' dilemmas in the original story's journey from Bywater Inn to Rivendell is a persuasive bit of evidence that Humphrey Carpenter is correct in stating that Tolkien did not have the 1960 material before him when he made those final changes to the text, but instead was almost certainly working from his memory of this material.

    In the 1950s, sales of THE HOBBIT picked up considerably, climbing even more dramatically after the publication of its long-awaited sequel, THE LORD OF THE RINGS (sales of which exploded — as did those of THE HOBBITwith the American 'boom' of the mid-1960s following the Ace Books 'scandal'). In 1972, Tolkien discovered that the 'main business' of his British publisher was marketing his fiction. Sales of his thirty-five-year-old children's book were 'rocketing up to hitherto unreached heights' (Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 421). THE HOBBIT would, by its 75th anniversary in 2012 (the year of Peter Jackson's first billion-dollar installment of the story's cinematic retelling as a trilogy of films and as the 'prequel' to his Academy Award-winning LORD OF THE RINGS Trilogy), have appeared in more than 50 languages, including Latin, and have long-since soared into the multimillion copy level in salestruly a worldwide classic, for all ages, and all times.

    C. S. Lewis' early prediction of October 1937 (see above) happily proved to be a woeful understatement, as THE HOBBIT and its sequel, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, gradually but steadily went on to win the hearts of readers everywhere around the world. As the 20th century drew to a close, magazine editors, literary critics, and pundits came up with a seemingly endless series of polls, surveys, and top 100 lists. When it came to the best book or best author of the past 100 years, in poll after poll, survey after survey, list after list, J.R.R. Tolkien was always at the top (THE HOBBIT made the BBC's Big Read list of the Top 100 books and was also placed by the teachers of the National Education Association on their list of 100 Best Books. These developments of course were no accident, as it has been said that 'one way to judge an author is to look at his or her reception by the reading public.' And by the echoing results of these 'final centennial analyses' the recapitulation should have come as no surprise to anyone at the start of the new millennium that 'no other author of the last century has so captured the imagination and hearts of his readers...' (Perry C. Bramlett, I Am in Fact a Hobbit: An Introduction to the Life and Work of J. R. R. Tolkien [2003], p. 2).

    Now, well into the 21st century, sales of Tolkien's books continue to rise unabated, making any statement dealing with numbers almost instantly outdated as soon as it is given. But one fact promises ever to be constant, and that is that any 'current' estimate will always place Tolkien's most popular works among the best-selling books of all time. ~ Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 22-23; The Hobbit: A Journey Into Maturity [1995], p. 10; Devin Brown, The Christian World of THE HOBBIT [2012], p. 10-11



    * The Quest of Erebor serves as a fascinating 'prologue' to THE HOBBIT (originally written as part of Appendix A of LOTR in the early 1950s — completed in 1954 — but in the event omitted from that work for reasons of space) and has the fictional frame of a conversation between Gandalf and the remaining companions of the Fellowship at Minas Tirith after the War of the Ring [TA 3018-19 > Jackson: TA 3001-02]. Ultimately, only a few paragraphs of The Quest of Erebor made their way into the published Lord of the Rings (pp. 1077-80), but clearly Tolkien did not so much reject this material as merely find himself forced to cut it for reasons of space (see Corey Olsen, Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT [2012], pp. 12-13). The Quest of Erebor presents Bilbo's story, particularly as it emerges in the opening chapter of THE HOBBIT, from Gandalf's point of view (starting before his initial meeting with Thorin and describing what led up to the Unexpected Party at Bag-End) and sets it firmly within the larger — what we may call 'strategic' — context of a new war against Sauron the Necromancer; it is in effect a complement to (and commentary on) THE HOBBIT's first chapter, retelling the story from Gandalf's and the dwarves' point of view, as Gandalf considers how to counter the threat of Smaug (whom he fears Sauron will initially manipulate to destroy Rivendell or Lórien, or ravage Eriador, including the Shire) in a developing war against the Dark Lord, which he already foresees as impending some eighty (Jackson: sixty) years before the event. Reference The Quest of Erebor in Unfinished Tales, pp. 321-336; Annotated HOBBIT, pp. 367-377; The History of Middle-earth VIII: The War of the Ring, pp. 357-58; and The History of Middle-earth XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp. 280-84, 286-89.

    When, around 1960, Tolkien decided to undertake a highly detailed revision of THE HOBBIT, to thereby fully reconcile it to the later story in chronology, geography, and style (Phase V: 'The 1960 Hobbit'), he drew upon this unpublished 'Quest' material when recasting THE HOBBIT into THE LORD OF THE RINGS' image, or the original story into the mold of its sequel [that is, he approached Bilbo's story from the point of view of the rejected Appendix material, retaining much of the wording of the original book while greatly altering the tone (muting the voice of the Narrator, omitting editorial asides, greatly reducing word-play; that is, the playfulness of the original gives way to a more stately style; characterization is also changed: Gandalf speaks with more authority, but it is an enhanced dignity that also makes him less sympathetic, more remote; Thorin, as the dwarf-leader, in keeping with his portrayal in The Quest of Erebor, becomes much more abrupt and brusque, showing an obsession with property and a grievance over his rights that anticipates his later fall in the Lonely Mountain chapters) — unfortunately, however, this is much to Bilbo's disadvantage, for it diminishes the hobbit in the reader's eyes, casting him as overly naïve and very much a silly fellow puffing and bobbing on the mat; we may therefore be very grateful that this highly ambitious effort by the author, while certainly noble in purpose and intent, never came to a full fruition, for Tolkien's mythology remains all the more rich, un-impoverished, and indubitably better for it††].

    Composed, as it seems, on the typewriter (existing for the most part only in a single-spaced typescript) and consisting of only the 1960 book's first two chapters ('A Well-Planned Party' and 'The Broken Bridge'), and the start of a third ('Arrival in Rivendell', plus time-lines and itinerary with extensive plot-notes that, in dealing with problems of the tale's chronology, focus particularly on the phases of the moon), the revision material (which, like 'The 1947 Hobbit', greatly expands in some places upon the original) remained wholly unknown — aside from one brief, passing mention in Humphrey Carpenter's 1977 Tolkien: A Biography (pp. 227-28) — until Christopher Tolkien read a substantial section from it in his 'Guest of Honor' presentation at the 1987 Marquette Tolkien Conference, Mythcon XVIII. In 2007 'The 1960 Hobbit' was published in its entirety for the first time in John D. Rateliff's The History of THE HOBBIT, pp. xxv-xxvi, 765-838n.

    Motion Picture 'Prequel' — as to which of Tolkien's two masterwork titles really 'should have served' as the 'cinematic' prequel to the other is somewhat of a 'chicken, or the egg?' debate. But as it turns out, it was somewhat fortuitous that Jackson's Rings Trilogy appeared first [2001-2003] as the cinematic prequel (securing 'movie rights' to THE HOBBIT had initially been pursued albeit unsuccessfully, being, as they were then c. 1995, in a state of hopeless disarray) and that his Hobbit Trilogy followed [2012-2014, after the complex legalities had been finally untangled by the major film companies sharing a stake in that film's fortunes**]. The reason why this particular 'ordering', or sequencing, of the two film trilogies might, in the end, have proven itself the most ideal is perhaps best articulated by Charles Moseley who, in his critical biography J. R. R. Tolkien [1997], speaks of the great complexities and interconnectedness of the three great popular incarnations of Tolkien's collective mythos (THE SILMARILLION, THE HOBBIT, and THE LORD OF THE RINGS). There are, after all, he says, elements of THE HOBBIT which — as Tolkien's first published Middle-earth fiction (that literally 'came from nowhere'), and standing alone — present certain riddles, or key 'unanswerables', such as: 'Who were the Hobbits? Where did they come from? Who was Gollum? How did he come to have the Ring? These had no explanation [in Tolkien's original story, or even in his early Silmarillion tales, which are devoid of Hobbits, neither are their origins there discussed]. So THE LORD OF THE RINGS, building on history and legend in THE SILMARILLION, [began] its existence ... as 'the New Hobbit', as a sequel; but as it developed it became both a chronological sequel and — in the narratives of explanation from one character to another embedded within it and in its appendicesa predecessor to THE HOBBIT. In short, 'the New Hobbit' sequel, as Tolkien finally developed it, necessarily (because of original story-element 'explanation' needs centering primarily around Hobbits) became in many ways THE HOBBIT's prequel. For it is only after we witness (in the Rings Trilogy) an aging Bilbo in that 'terrible moment when Frodo sees 'a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and groping hands' [that] we are able to understand how a Bilbo or a Frodo, under the influence of the Ring, could turn into a Gollum...' (Moseley, J. R. R. Tolkien [1997], pp. 37, 54; see pp. 35-39, especially, for the complex interconnectedness of the legendarium's major storial components). Much, then (as in retrospect Tolkien readers-turned-film-goers are now able to see), stood to be explained with Jackson's Rings Trilogy coming first in the timescale of the cinematic retellings, providing (as indeed that first film trilogy did) the answers to the questions Moseley poses by proxy on behalf of THE HOBBIT's worldwide readership.

    ** In connection with the difficulties encountered translating THE HOBBIT to film, for an excellent history of what also proved for Jackson to be an obstacle-fraught quest to bring the Rings Trilogy to the big screen, see Kristin Thompson's The Frodo Franchise: THE LORD OF THE RINGS and Modern Hollywood [2007].

    In the 1960 Hobbit, all first-person references by the Narrator are 'excised from the text, along with all direct (second person) addresses by the Narrator to the reader; Tolkien had come to feel that these were a stylistic flaw and removed them throughout.' Ultimately, however, according to Christopher Tolkien, when his father had reached this point in the 1960 'recasting' he loaned the material to a friend to get an outside opinion on it. This person's identity remains unknown, but 'apparently her response was something along the lines of 'this is wonderful, but it's not THE HOBBIT'. She must have been someone whose judgment Tolkien respected, for he abandoned the work and decided to let THE HOBBIT retain its own autonomy and voice rather than completely incorporate it into [LOTR] as a lesser 'prelude' to the greater work. When he briefly returned to it in 1965 for the Third Edition [Phase VI: 'The 1966 Hobbit'] revisions, he restricted himself in the main to the correction of errors and egregious departures from Middle-earth as it had developed' (e.g., the anachronistic policemen of Chapter II) 'and left matters of style and tone alone. Thus the work begun in a flash of inspiration thirty-five years before — 'in a hole in the ground lived a hobbit' — saw periodic revisioning through several distinct phases over a period of thirty years (1930 to 1960), until in the last decade of its author's life [1960 to 1966] it reached the final form we know and love today...' ~ History of THE HOBBIT, pp. 811-812; emphasis mine.

    †† 'If THE LORD OF THE RINGS is, as some have claimed, the 'Book of the Century', then THE HOBBIT is more than the book that made it all possible. A major contribution to the Golden Age of children's literature, it is a rare example of a work that transcends age boundaries in its readership, like Grahame's The Golden Age, Carroll's two Alice books, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and very few others. It is, like Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in relation to his Ulysses, or Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark in relation to Alice in Wonderland, a case of a masterpiece overshadowed by another masterpiece on a grander scale from the same author. Had Tolkien never completed THE LORD OF THE RINGS, he would still be remembered as one of the great fantasy authors. The achievement of the sequel has eclipsed the accomplishment of writing THE HOBBIT itself, but we should not deny the distinct appeal and charm of the original book. In the end, [it ostensibly] was more than just the intractable nature of the problems facing him in recasting the book that caused Tolkien to abandon [the 1960 Hobbit]. Rather, he decided to trust his friend's judgment that what he was doing was 'wonderful, but not THE HOBBIT' [see the above note]. That is, he came to recognize that THE HOBBIT was more than [LOTR] writ small, more than a 'charming prelude': indeed, a work deserving to stand on its own merits ... And with that realization, aside from [Phase VI] of 1965/66 ... Tolkien's decades-long work on THE HOBBIT finally came to an end...' ~ John D. Rateliff, History of THE HOBBIT, p. 837; emphasis mine.





    (This post was edited by entmaiden on Mar 26 2015, 7:57pm)


    geordie
    Tol Eressea

    Mar 11 2015, 7:11pm

    Post #2 of 3 (1216 views)
    Shortcut
    Is this all cut & paste?// [In reply to] Can't Post

     


    Bracegirdle
    Valinor


    Mar 11 2015, 9:41pm

    Post #3 of 3 (1204 views)
    Shortcut
    Brief Sketch... Did someone say “Brief Sketch”? // [In reply to] Can't Post

     



     
     

    Search for (options) Powered by Gossamer Forum v.1.2.3

    home | advertising | contact us | back to top | search news | join list | Content Rating

    This site is maintained and updated by fans of The Lord of the Rings, and is in no way affiliated with Tolkien Enterprises or the Tolkien Estate. We in no way claim the artwork displayed to be our own. Copyrights and trademarks for the books, films, articles, and other promotional materials are held by their respective owners and their use is allowed under the fair use clause of the Copyright Law. Design and original photography however are copyright © 1999-2012 TheOneRing.net. Binary hosting provided by Nexcess.net

    Do not follow this link, or your host will be blocked from this site. This is a spider trap.