The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

Every story must have a beginning … and in his own words, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was marking examination papers when he found one in which the examinee had left a single blank page in the answer-book. On this leaf, he simply wrote, "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit". Nobody claims to know what inspired him! Published in 1937, “The Hobbit” is set in an imaginary world known as “Middle-Earth”, which is supposedly a pre-historic period and I believe the name derives from Middle English (Tolkien was a scholar of Old and Middle English). However, “The Hobbit” is so far removed ...

There is clearly an art to enjoying The Hobbit, with the obvious thing being not to have read the Lord of the Rings first, because when you do so you will soon find that the Hobbit is little more than a fanciful fairytale of little people, little adventures, great danger and little point. The Hobbit is always cited as being a classic novel, one of the very best of the sword and sorcery genre, but having just read it for the first time in almost 30 years, I can honestly say it was a sad disappointment, even at less than four quid from my local Tesco. I was surprised and overjoyed when I found it at this bargain price, because my interest in Tolkien and all of ...

What is a hobbit? The word rolls smoothly out of the tongue but who but the reader of this story by Prof. J.R.R. Tolkien would be able to answer this seemingly difficult and abstract question. From the off start the mystery that is what a hobbit actually is, is answered and the reader can read on without different illustrations forming in their own imaginations. This is critical, because although the main character of the story is the hobbit, the phenomenon of it is not what the story is about but rather its unusual actions. The hobbits are a race of small humble, food loving creatures. They live in the hillside and it is a rare occasion indeed for one of them to stray ...