My first experience of this novel was the best possible! My mother had had the book recommended to her by friends, so she went out and bought a copy, and one summer holiday I lay with my brother and sister on my parents’ bed, and she began to read. We were all entranced.
The Hobbit is a children’s fantasy novel by English author J.R.R. Tolkien.
It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim. The first print run was 1500 copies, but there was very soon a demand for more. It was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction.
Tolkien was heavily involved in the design and illustration – his surviving letters to Allen & Unwin show a detailed interest in the book’s production.
The Hobbit is set in Tolkien’s fictional universe and follows the quest of home-loving Bilbo Baggins, to win a share of the treasure guarded by a dragon named Smaug. Bilbo’s journey takes him from his light-hearted, rural surroundings into more sinister territory. The story is a brilliant balance between the real and the unreal, the known and unknown. Tolkien mixes the mundane and the mythical, satisfying our unfulfilled wishes as he does so.
The publisher was encouraged by the book’s critical and financial success and, therefore, requested a sequel. As Tolkien’s work on its successor, The Lord of the Rings progressed, 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 Hobbit has never been out of print and is recognized as a classic in children’s literature. Its ongoing legacy includes many adaptations for stage, screen, radio, board games, and video games. Several of these adaptations have received critical recognition on their own merits.