J. R. R. Tolkien’s classic story for children launched an entire imaginary world, numerous books and films, and began the revolutionizing work on the genre of fantasy fiction that culminated in The Lord of the Rings. But, since “the road goes ever on and on,” numerous facts and curiosities have accrued to Tolkien’s work. Here is a look at 33 facts about The Hobbit that you may not be aware of. (On the other hand, if you’re a regular reader of the Xenite Middle Earth site, you might be familiar with all these facts and more.) The full title of this book is The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. The subtitle, There and Back Again, was used in the LOTR movies by Peter Jackson to refer to Bilbo’s memoirs, but in the novels, these memoirs were referred to as the Red Book of Westmarch, although Bilbo had written and crossed out several other titles: My Diary, My Unexpected Journey, There and Back Again, And What Happened After. The novel was intended as a standalone children’s story. Tolkien drew on fairy tales among other sources to inform his story and to get the narrative voice just right. If you’ve read both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the difference in tone between somber and sober in the former to light-hearted in the latter is evident. It was by design. The First Edition, published in 1937, differs in one major significant way from all subsequent editions, beginning with the Second Edition published in 1951. Even though Tolkien had only intended The Hobbit to be a standalone book, his publishers were so happy with its success that they requested a sequel, which initially was an early draft of The Silmarillion, but it was rejected without being fully read. Tolkien began The Lord of the Rings but had to revise the chapter, “Riddles in the Dark” where Bilbo finds the ring and trades riddles with Gollum. Tolkien revised this chapter to reflect the greater role of the ring and hint at its corrupting nature. The original version of this chapter depicted a more benevolent, albeit eccentric, Gollum who wagered his magic ring in a game of riddles. This version also became the lie Bilbo told everyone about how he acquired the ring, that it was a “present” from Gollum to him for winning the riddle game. Note the similarity to Gollum’s claim that the ring came to him as a birthday present. However, until the 1951 Second Edition of The Hobbit, the lie version was the only version available. According to a letter Tolkien wrote to the poet, W. H. Auden, Tolkien began writing The Hobbit in the early 1930’s when he was grading papers and found a blank page among the papers. He began to write, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” By 1932, he had finished the story and passed it along to friends and students to read. One student passed the book along and […]
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