<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The Hobbit (more fully, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again) is a 1937 novel for children by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Hobbit (especially in its first edition) is an adventure tale for young people, in which Tolkien draws on the invented languages, characters, poetry, and legends of Middle-earth which he had been developing since 1914 to provide a sense of depth and history.

An unassuming hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, is chosen by the wizard Gandalf the Grey to accompany a party of dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield on a quest to recover a lost treasure from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, Bilbo encounters elves and trolls, and wins a magic Ring in a riddle-game with the mysterious creature Gollum which will prove to have a significance even its author did not foresee at the time of writing.

The book was immediately successful, in a modest way; the first . . .