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The History of The Hobbit
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The History of The Hobbit
The History of The Hobbit is a two-volume study of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 children's fantasy novel The Hobbit. It was first published by HarperCollins in 2007. It contains Tolkien's unpublished drafts of the novel, with commentary by John D. Rateliff. It details Tolkien's various revisions to The Hobbit, including abandoned revisions for the unpublished third edition of the work, intended for 1960, as well as previously unpublished original maps and illustrations drawn by Tolkien.
The work provides the same sort of literary analysis of The Hobbit that Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume The History of Middle-earth provides for The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. In Rateliff's view, the work is complementary to Douglas A. Anderson's 1988 work The Annotated Hobbit, which presents and comments upon a single text of the novel.
The History of The Hobbit consists of a collection of Tolkien's draft versions of The Hobbit, together with John Rateliff's commentary upon them. Rateliff organises the material into five phases of writing.
Phase 1 contains "The Pryftan Fragment" (6 pages, named for its early name for Smaug the dragon, representing the second half of Chapter 1) and "The Bladorthin Typescript" (12 pages, named for its early name for Gandalf the wizard, representing the first half of Chapter 1, and overlapping with the Fragment).
Most of the book is filled with a composite text of the manuscripts of phases 2 and 3 of J.R.R. Tolkien's drafting of The Hobbit, phase 2 being a nearly complete draft (continuing from the Typescript) and phase 3 being mainly a fair copy of that. Phase 3 consists of two typed versions (the incomplete "First Typescript" made by Tolkien, and the complete "Second Typescript" made by his son Michael after he had injured one of his hands) of Chapters 1 to 12 and a piece of Chapter 14, all based on the phase 2 manuscript. Tolkien found his son's typescript inaccurate and returned to the "First Typescript", correcting it in manuscript and sending it to the printers.
Phase 4 is Tolkien's rewritten version of the novel, ten years after its publication, in 1947. Phase 5 is his 1960 rewriting of Chapters 1 and 2, attempting to explain Gandalf's selection of Bilbo as the story's burglar.
The book has numerous illustrations, including both materials that Tolkien intended to use to support the text (maps, Bilbo's contract written in Tengwar and supposedly preserved after being left by Thorin on the mantelpiece in Bag End, paintings), and images of Tolkien's manuscripts and letters. Rateliff has added detailed notes and appendices.
When Christopher Tolkien began publishing The History of Middle-earth, a 12-volume series documenting his father's writing process in the creation of Middle-earth, with texts dating from the 1910s to the 1970s, he made a conscious decision not to issue a volume detailing the creation of The Hobbit. Instead, it focuses on Tolkien's legendarium, spanning the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.
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The History of The Hobbit
The History of The Hobbit is a two-volume study of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 children's fantasy novel The Hobbit. It was first published by HarperCollins in 2007. It contains Tolkien's unpublished drafts of the novel, with commentary by John D. Rateliff. It details Tolkien's various revisions to The Hobbit, including abandoned revisions for the unpublished third edition of the work, intended for 1960, as well as previously unpublished original maps and illustrations drawn by Tolkien.
The work provides the same sort of literary analysis of The Hobbit that Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume The History of Middle-earth provides for The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. In Rateliff's view, the work is complementary to Douglas A. Anderson's 1988 work The Annotated Hobbit, which presents and comments upon a single text of the novel.
The History of The Hobbit consists of a collection of Tolkien's draft versions of The Hobbit, together with John Rateliff's commentary upon them. Rateliff organises the material into five phases of writing.
Phase 1 contains "The Pryftan Fragment" (6 pages, named for its early name for Smaug the dragon, representing the second half of Chapter 1) and "The Bladorthin Typescript" (12 pages, named for its early name for Gandalf the wizard, representing the first half of Chapter 1, and overlapping with the Fragment).
Most of the book is filled with a composite text of the manuscripts of phases 2 and 3 of J.R.R. Tolkien's drafting of The Hobbit, phase 2 being a nearly complete draft (continuing from the Typescript) and phase 3 being mainly a fair copy of that. Phase 3 consists of two typed versions (the incomplete "First Typescript" made by Tolkien, and the complete "Second Typescript" made by his son Michael after he had injured one of his hands) of Chapters 1 to 12 and a piece of Chapter 14, all based on the phase 2 manuscript. Tolkien found his son's typescript inaccurate and returned to the "First Typescript", correcting it in manuscript and sending it to the printers.
Phase 4 is Tolkien's rewritten version of the novel, ten years after its publication, in 1947. Phase 5 is his 1960 rewriting of Chapters 1 and 2, attempting to explain Gandalf's selection of Bilbo as the story's burglar.
The book has numerous illustrations, including both materials that Tolkien intended to use to support the text (maps, Bilbo's contract written in Tengwar and supposedly preserved after being left by Thorin on the mantelpiece in Bag End, paintings), and images of Tolkien's manuscripts and letters. Rateliff has added detailed notes and appendices.
When Christopher Tolkien began publishing The History of Middle-earth, a 12-volume series documenting his father's writing process in the creation of Middle-earth, with texts dating from the 1910s to the 1970s, he made a conscious decision not to issue a volume detailing the creation of The Hobbit. Instead, it focuses on Tolkien's legendarium, spanning the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.