<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 published review in the Times Literary Supplement put it in a class with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows, but not all critics were as kind. Nevertheless, demands from readers for a sequel would lead Tolkien to begin work on the "new Hobbit", a work which would finally appear almost twenty years later as The Lord of the Rings.

The Annotated Hobbit, with notes and commentary by critic and scholar Douglas A. Anderson, appeared in 1989, and a second revised edition was issued in 2002.

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Media Adaptations

An animated version by Rankin-Bass (described succinctly as "truly execrable" by Douglas Anderson) appeared in 1977, and rumors persist of Peter Jackson's desire to film the novel and Ian McKellan's desire to play Gandalf again, if only the convoluted rights issues can be resolved.

ISBNs

To find a source to purchase the book, click the ISBN(s) below:

• ISBN 978-0618260300 2002 paperback
• ISBN 978-0007137275 2003 annotated version
• ISBN 978-0788789823 2001 unabridged audio CD version