“The Hobbit”, by J. R. R. Tolkien

 

256 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN-13: 978-0395071229

The first time I ever heard of hobbits, Tolkien, Middle Earth and the lot was through the 1977 Rankin/Bass interpretation…and brother, was I hooked. While it would take several more years before I got into Dungeons & Dragons, it was from this time that I became aware of fantasy fiction, magic, dragons, wizards, warriors, elves and so forth. So, when in grade school I was perusing the library and came across The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien – imagine, turning a cartoon into a book! – I pitched right in and read it cover-to-cover in a day or two (I know, the book came first, but I didn’t know that at the time). For those of you who have lived under a rock for the last several decades, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (to give the complete title) is a fantasy children’s story by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, first published in – get this – 1937, where it became much-beloved by both pointy-heads (it won the Carnegie Medal and a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction) and common-folk (it has been a consistent bestseller since publication). A rare feat, indeed.

The tale told by Tolkien as to how The Hobbit came to be was related in a letter he wrote to W. H. Auden in 1955 in which, one day while marking School Certificate papers early in the 1930s, he found a blank page and, suddenly inspired, wrote the immortal words: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”.  By late 1932, Tolkien had finished the story and lent it to several friends (including C. S. Lewis) and a student of Tolkien’s named Elaine Griffiths. This last bit is important for, in 1936, Griffiths was visited in Oxford by Susan Dagnall, a staff member of the publisher George Allen & Unwin, whence she either lent Dagnall the book or suggested she borrow it from Tolkien. Whatever. What’s important is that Dagnall was so impressed by The Hobbit that she showed it to Stanley Unwin. He then asked his 10-year-old son Rayner to review it and he, to his everlasting glory, gave the book glowing raves, which was all that Allen & Unwin needed to publish and transform this Oxford Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and fellow at Pembroke College into a modern-day skald.

So, what is it about The Hobbit that makes it so transcendent and popular? Why is it liked by so many people of different generations, social strata, nationalities and all that? There are any number of reasons, but perhaps the simplest and, therefore, best reason is that it is a well-written book: characters are developed, their motivations are clear, the tale moves along at a brisk pace (important when reading to children), the main character is challenged and, by being so, grows and develops, there is action and adventure, wonderful places and sweeping vistas, fantastic creatures and horrible monsters, heroic feats and terrible consequences – in short (heh), The Hobbit is Old School Storytelling at its best, something we get precious little of anymore, especially in children’s fiction. And that’s another important point: this book was meant for children, filled with timeless themes that transcend so much: courage, loyalty, duty, sticktoitiveness – its all there, especially the bit wherein Bilbo Baggins is drawn out of his comfortable (not to say, stagnant) life and made to go adventuring and, in so doing, becomes a better hobbit for it.

It hooked me when I was child and has stayed with me ever since, which is what great literature is supposed to do. Yeah, I said it: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is great literature, for it inspires as it entertains and enlightens as it informs generations of children – and adults – in years past, in the present and for years to come.