On This Day In 1937, JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit Was Published For The First Time. Tolkien Had Been Grading

On this day in 1937, JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit was published for the first time. Tolkien had been grading papers in the late 1920s or early 1930s (accounts vary), when out of nowhere he scribbled the novel’s opening words “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” on a piece of paper. His inspirations for the book ranged from Norse mythology to Beowulf to William Morris to the Germanic language. Although The Hobbit is frequently classed as children’s literature, Tolkien disagreed with that categorization, saying, “If you’re a youngish man and you don’t want to be made fun of, you say you’re writing for children.” The first edition of The Hobbit differs in small but substantial ways from the second edition. By 1937, Tolkien had started on The Lord of the Rings trilogy with the sinister One Ring as its centerpiece and decided he need to revise the chapter about Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum to be more in line with events in his new books. In the first version of “Riddles in the Dark,” Gollum is a far less treacherous character, who cheerfully wagers his “precious” in the game of riddles he plays with Bilbo. When Gollum goes looking for the Ring and can’t find it, Bilbo having already secretly pocketed it, he is only sorry that he can’t give it to Bilbo for winning the game. He then willingly leads Bilbo out of the cave where they’ve met. In the revised version, of course, Bilbo forfeits his life if he loses the game (Gollum’s suggestion) and despite winning it, is pursued out of the cave by a murderous Gollum, anyway.

Featured here is the first American edition, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1938. In addition to the original version of “Riddles in the Dark,” it contains four color plates of Tolkien’s illustrations and red maps on the end-papers. The Hobbit has not been out of print since its publication 78 years ago. SL JRR Tolkien. The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again. (Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1938)

823 T57h1938: http://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/vf-uiu/Record/uiu_1212784/Description