J. R. R. Tolkien - The Hobbit

The Hobbit was first published in September 1937. Its 1951 second edition (fifth impression) contains a significantly revised portion of Chapter V, Riddles in the Dark, which brings the story of The Hobbit more in line with its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, then in progress. Tolkien made some further revisions to the American edition published by Ballantine Books in February 1966, and to the British third edition (sixteenth impression) published by George Allen & Unwin later that same year.

For the 1995 British hardcover edition, published by HarperCollins, the text of The Hobbit was entered into word-processing files, and a number of further corrections of misprints and errors were made. Since then, various editions of The Hobbit have been generated from that computerized text file. For the present text, that file has been compared again, line by line, with the earlier editions, and a number of further corrections have been made to present a text that, as closely as possible, represents Tolkiens final intended form.

Readers interested in details of the changes made at various times to the text of The Hobbit are referred to Appendix A, Textual and Revisional Notes, of The Annotated Hobbit (1988), and J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography by Wayne G. Hammond, with the assistance of Douglas A. Anderson (1993).

Douglas A. Anderson

May 2001

The reason for this use is given in The Lord of the Rings, III, 1136.

This is a story of long ago. At that time the languages and letters were quite different from ours of today. English is used to represent the languages. But two points may be noted. (1) In English the only correct plural of dwarf is dwarfs, and the adjective is dwarfish. In this story dwarves and dwarvish are used, but only when speaking of the ancient people to whom Thorin Oakenshield and his companions belonged. (2) Orc is not an English word. It occurs in one or two places but is usually translated goblin (or hobgoblin for the larger kinds). Orc is the hobbits form of the name given at that time to these creatures, and it is not connected at all with our orc, ork, applied to sea-animals of dolphin-kind.

Runes were old letters originally used for cutting or scratching on wood, stone, or metal, and so were thin and angular. At the time of this tale only the Dwarves made regular use of them, especially for private or secret records. Their runes are in this book represented by English runes, which are known now to few people. If the runes on Thrors Map are compared with the transcriptions into modern letters, the alphabet, adapted to modern English, can be discovered and the above runic title also read. On the Map all the normal runes are found, except for X. I and U are used for J and V. There was no rune for Q (use CW); nor for Z (the dwarf-rune may be used if required). It will be found, however, that some single runes stand for two modern letters: th, ng, ee; other runes of the same kind (ea and st) were also sometimes used. The secret door was marked D . From the side a hand pointed to this, and under it was written: The last two runes are the initials of Thror and Thrain. The moon-runes read by Elrond were:

On the Map the compass points are marked in runes, with East at the top, as usual in dwarf-maps, and so read clockwise: E(ast), S(outh), W(est), N(orth).

THE HOBBIT

OR
THERE AND BACK AGAIN

BY

J.R.R. TOLKIEN

The Hobbit

Leaf by Niggle

On Fairy-Stories

Farmer Giles of Ham

The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth

The Lord of the Rings

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

The Road Goes Ever On (with Donald Swann)

Smith of Wootton Major

WORKS PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo

The Father Christmas Letters

The Silmarillion

Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien

Unfinished Tales

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Finn and Hengest

Mr Bliss

The Monsters and the Critics & Other Essays

Roverandom

The Children of Hrin

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrn

THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH BY CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN

I The Book of Lost Tales, Part One

II The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two

III The Lays of Beleriand

IV The Shaping of Middle-earth

V The Lost Road and Other Writings

VI The Return of the Shadow

VII The Treason of Isengard

VIII The War of the Ring

IX Sauron Defeated

X Morgoths Ring

XI The War of the Jewels

XII The Peoples of Middle-earth

The Hobbit is a tale of high adventure, undertaken by a company of dwarves, in search of dragon-guarded gold. A reluctant partner in this perilous quest is Bilbo Baggins, a comfort-loving, unambitious hobbit, who surprises even himself by his resourcefulness and his skill as a burglar.