The Hobbit

''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the '' New York Herald Tribune'' for best juvenile fiction. It is recognized as a classic in children's literature and is one of the best-selling books of all time, with over 100 million copies sold.

''The Hobbit'' is set in Middle-earth and follows home-loving Bilbo Baggins, the titular hobbit who joins the wizard Gandalf and the thirteen dwarves of Thorin's Company on a quest to reclaim the dwarves' home and treasure from the dragon Smaug. Bilbo's journey takes him from his peaceful rural surroundings into more sinister territory.

The story is told in the form of a picaresque or episodic quest; several chapters introduce a new type of monster or threat as Bilbo progresses through the landscape. Bilbo gains a new level of maturity, competence, and wisdom by accepting the disreputable, romantic, fey and adventurous sides of his nature and applying his wits and common sense. The story reaches its climax in the Battle of Five Armies, where many of the characters and creatures from earlier chapters re-emerge to engage in conflict. Personal growth and forms of heroism are central themes of the story, along with motifs of warfare. These themes have led critics to view Tolkien's own experiences during the First World War as instrumental in shaping the story. His scholarly knowledge of Germanic philology and interest in mythology and fairy tales are often noted as influences, but more recent fiction including adventure stories and the works of William Morris also played a part.

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

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist, is a respectable, reserved and well-to-do hobbit—a race resembling short humans with furry, leathery feet who live in underground houses and are mainly farmers and gardeners. Gandalf, an itinerant wizard, introduces Bilbo to a company of thirteen dwarves. Thorin Oakenshield is the proud, pompous head of the company of dwarves and heir to the destroyed dwarvish kingdom under the Lonely Mountain. Smaug is a dragon who long ago pillaged the dwarvish kingdom of Thorin's grandfather and sleeps upon the vast treasure.

The plot involves a host of other characters of varying importance, such as the twelve other dwarves of the company; two types of elves: both puckish and more serious warrior types; Men; man-eating trolls; boulder-throwing giants; evil cave-dwelling goblins; forest-dwelling giant spiders who can speak; immense and heroic eagles who also speak; evil wolves, or Wargs, who are allied with the goblins; Elrond the sage; Gollum, a strange creature inhabiting an underground lake; Beorn, a man who can assume bear form; and Bard the Bowman, a grim but honourable archer of Lake-town.

Plot

Gandalf tricks Bilbo Baggins into hosting a party for Thorin Oakenshield and his band of twelve dwarves (Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur and Bombur), who go over their plans to reclaim their ancient home, Lonely Mountain, and its vast treasure from the dragon Smaug. Gandalf unveils Thror's map showing a secret door into the Mountain and proposes that dumbfounded Bilbo should serve as the expedition's "burglar". The dwarves ridicule the idea, but Bilbo, indignant, sets off with them.

The group travels into the wild. Gandalf saves the company from trolls and leads them to Rivendell, where Elrond reveals more secrets from the map. When they attempt to cross the Misty Mountains, they are caught by goblins and driven deep underground. Although Gandalf kills the goblin king and rescues them, Bilbo gets separated from the others as they flee the goblins. Lost in the goblin tunnels, he stumbles across a mysterious ring and then encounters Gollum, who engages him in a game, each posing a riddle until one of them cannot solve it. If Bilbo wins, Gollum will show him the way out of the tunnels, but if he fails, his life will be forfeit. With the help of the ring, which confers invisibility when worn, Bilbo escapes and rejoins the dwarves, improving his reputation with them. The goblins and Wargs give chase, but the company are saved by eagles. They rest in the house of the skin-changer Beorn.

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 a Lake-town resident named 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 Iron Hills and reinforces his position. Bilbo slips out and gives the Arkenstone to the besiegers, hoping to head off a war. When they offer the jewel to Thorin in exchange for treasure, Bilbo reveals how they obtained it. Thorin, furious at what he sees as betrayal, banishes Bilbo, and battle seems inevitable when Dain, Thorin's second cousin, arrives with an army of dwarf warriors.

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 the University of Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, with a fellowship at Pembroke College. Several of his poems had been published in magazines and small collections, including ''Goblin Feet'' and '' The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked'', a reworking of '' Hey Diddle Diddle'', an English nursery rhyme. His creative endeavours at this time also included letters from Father Christmas to his children—illustrated manuscripts that featured warring gnomes and goblins, and a helpful polar bear—alongside the creation of elven languages and an attendant mythology, including '' The Book of Lost Tales'', which he had been creating since 1917. These works were all published posthumously.

In a 1955 letter to W. H. Auden, Tolkien recollects that he began ''The Hobbit'' one day early in the 1930s. While he was marking School Certificate papers, he found a blank page. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." By late 1932 he had finished the story and then lent the manuscript to several friends, including C. S. Lewis and a student of Tolkien's named Elaine Griffiths. In 1936, when Griffiths was visited in Oxford by Susan Dagnall, a staff member of the publisher George Allen & Unwin, she is reported to have either lent Dagnall the book or suggested that she should borrow it from Tolkien. In any event, Dagnall was impressed by it, and showed the book to Stanley Unwin, who then asked his 10-year-old son Rayner to review it. Rayner's favourable comments settled Allen & Unwin's decision to publish Tolkien's book.

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 fantasy world. The world is shown on the endpaper map as "Western Lands" westward and " Wilderland" as the east. Originally this world was self-contained, but as Tolkien began work on ''The Lord of the Rings'', he decided these stories could fit into the legendarium he had been working on privately for decades. ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' became the end of the " Third Age" of Middle Earth within Arda. Eventually those tales of the earlier periods became published as '' The Silmarillion'' and other posthumous works.

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."

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'' runes on the reverse so they could be seen when held up to the light. In the end the cost, as well as the shading of the maps, which would be difficult to reproduce, resulted in the final design of two maps as endpapers, ''Thror's map'', and the ''Map of Wilderland'' (see Rhovanion), both printed in black and red on the paper's cream background.

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 Trolls'', ''The Mountain Path'', ''The Misty Mountains looking West from the Eyrie towards Goblin Gate'', '' Beorn's Hall'', '' Mirkwood'', '' The Elvenking's Gate'', '' Lake Town'', ''The Front Gate'' and ''The Hall at Bag-End''. All but one of the illustrations were a full page, and one, the Mirkwood illustration, required a separate plate.

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. 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.

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 " þ" ( Thrain and Thror) runes and one " d" (door). The front and back covers were mirror images of each other, with an elongated dragon characteristic of Tolkien's style stamped along the lower edge, and with a sketch of the Misty Mountains stamped along the upper edge.

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 Smaug'', which features a dwarvish curse written in Tolkien's invented script Tengwar, and signed with two "þ" ("Th") runes. The additional illustrations proved so appealing that George Allen & Unwin adopted the colour plates as well for their second printing, with exception of ''Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes''.

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. Douglas Anderson's '' The Annotated Hobbit'' is illustrated with many black-and-white drawings taken from translations of the story into some 25 languages.

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 "New Age" and esoteric literature, stemming from Tolkien's popularity with the elements of counter-culture in the 1970s.

Genre

''The Hobbit'' takes cues from narrative models of children's literature, as shown by its omniscient narrator and characters that young children can relate to, such as the small, food-obsessed, and morally ambiguous Bilbo. The text emphasizes the relationship between time and narrative progress and it openly distinguishes "safe" from "dangerous" in its geography. Both are key elements of works intended for children, as is the "home-away-home" (or ''there and back again'') plot structure typical of the Bildungsroman. While Tolkien later claimed to dislike the aspect of the narrative voice addressing the reader directly, the narrative voice contributes significantly to the success of the novel. The scholar Lois R. Kuznets comments that the "obtrusive narrator" is part of a standard "rhetoric of childhood"; C. W. Sullivan III adds that Tolkien may have taken the idea of an intrusive narrator from the medieval texts ''Beowulf'' and '' Sir Gawain and the Green Knight''. Emer O'Sullivan, in her ''Comparative Children's Literature'', notes ''The Hobbit'' as one of a handful of children's books that have been accepted into mainstream literature, alongside Jostein Gaarder's '' Sophie's World'' (1991) and J. K. Rowling's ''Harry Potter'' series (1997–2007).

Tolkien intended ''The Hobbit'' as a "fairy-story" and wrote it in a tone suited to addressing children; 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. 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. 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.

The book is popularly called (and often marketed as) a fantasy novel, but like '' Peter Pan and Wendy'' by J. M. Barrie and '' The Princess and the Goblin'' by George MacDonald, both of which influenced Tolkien and contain fantasy elements, it is primarily identified as being children's literature. The two genres are not mutually exclusive, so some definitions of high fantasy include works for children by authors such as L. Frank Baum and Lloyd Alexander alongside the works of Gene Wolfe and Jonathan Swift, which are more often considered adult literature. ''The Hobbit'' has been called "the most popular of all twentieth-century fantasies written for children". Jane Chance, however, considers the book to be a children's novel only in the sense that it appeals to the child in an adult reader. Sullivan credits the first publication of ''The Hobbit'' as an important step in the development of high fantasy, and further credits the 1960s paperback debuts of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' as essential to the creation of a mass market for fiction of this kind as well as the fantasy genre's current status.

Style

Tolkien's prose is unpretentious and straightforward, taking as given the existence of his imaginary world and describing its details in a matter-of-fact way, while often introducing the new and fantastic in an almost casual manner. This down-to-earth style, also found in later fantasy such as Richard Adams' '' Watership Down'' and Peter Beagle's '' The Last Unicorn'', accepts readers into the fictional world, rather than cajoling or attempting to convince them of its reality. While ''The Hobbit'' is written in a simple, friendly language, each of its characters has a unique voice. The narrator, who occasionally interrupts the narrative flow with asides (a device common to both children's and Anglo-Saxon literature), has his own linguistic style separate from those of the main characters.

The basic form of the story is that of a quest, 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:

This onomatopoeic singing undercuts the dangerous scene with a sense of humour. Tolkien achieves balance of humour and danger through other means as well, as seen in the foolishness and Cockney dialect of the trolls and in the drunkenness of the elven captors. The general form—that of a journey into strange lands, told in a light-hearted mood and interspersed with songs—may be following the model of ''The Icelandic Journals'' by William Morris, an important literary influence on Tolkien.

Influences

Norse mythology

Tolkien's works show many influences from Norse mythology, reflecting his lifelong passion for those stories and his academic interest in Germanic philology. ''The Hobbit'' is no exception to this; the work shows influences from northern European literature, myths and languages, especially from the ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda''. Examples include the names of the dwarves, Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, Dwalin, Balin, Dain, Nain and Thorin Oakenshield, along with Gandalf which was a dwarf-name in the Norse. But while their names are Norse, the characters of the dwarves are based on fairy tales such as ''Snow White'' and '' Snow-White and Rose-Red'' as collected by the Brothers Grimm, while the latter tale may have influenced the character of Beorn.

Tolkien's use of descriptive names such as '' Misty Mountains'' and ''Bag End'' echoes the names used in Old Norse sagas. The names of the dwarf-friendly ravens, such as Roäc, are derived from the Old Norse words for "raven" and "rook", but their peaceful characters are unlike the typical carrion birds from Old Norse and Old English literature. Tolkien is not simply skimming historical sources for effect: the juxtaposition of old and new styles of expression is seen by the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey as one of the major themes explored in ''The Hobbit''. Maps figure in both saga literature and ''The Hobbit''.

Old English literature

Themes from Old English literature, especially from ''Beowulf'', shape the ancient world which Bilbo stepped into. Tolkien, a scholar of ''Beowulf'', counted the epic among his "most valued sources" for ''The Hobbit''. Tolkien was one of the first critics to treat ''Beowulf'' as a literary work with value beyond the merely historical, with his 1936 lecture '' Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics''. Tolkien borrowed several elements from ''Beowulf'', including a monstrous, intelligent dragon. Certain descriptions in ''The Hobbit'' seem to have been lifted straight out of ''Beowulf'' with some minor rewording, such as when the dragon stretches its neck out to sniff for intruders. Likewise, Tolkien's descriptions of the lair as accessed through a secret passage mirror those in ''Beowulf''. Other specific plot elements and features in ''The Hobbit'' that show similarities to ''Beowulf'' include the title of ''thief'', as Bilbo is called by Gollum and later by Smaug, and Smaug's personality, which leads to the destruction of Lake-town. Tolkien refines parts of ''Beowulf'' plot that he appears to have found less than satisfactorily described, such as details about the cup-thief and the dragon's intellect and personality.

Named swords of renown, adorned with runes, similarly have Old English connections. In using his elf-sword, Bilbo finally takes his first independent heroic action. By his naming the sword " Sting" we see Bilbo's acceptance of the kinds of cultural and linguistic practices found in ''Beowulf'', signifying his entrance into the ancient world in which he found himself. This progression culminates in Bilbo stealing a cup from the dragon's hoard, rousing him to wrath—an incident directly mirroring ''Beowulf'' and an action entirely determined by traditional narrative patterns. As Tolkien wrote, "The episode of the theft arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at this point. I fancy the author of ''Beowulf'' would say much the same." The name of the wizard Radagast is taken from the name of the Slavic deity Radogost.

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. 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, whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible

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