Synopsis
Gandalf leads a group of dwarves and Bilbo, a hobbit, to the lair of Smaug and gold treasure.
History
First publication: George Allen & Unwin, September 21, 1937
Review
This book is generally called a children’s book. Probably because it is fantasy and not dealing with he real current world. To read it, I find it is far more sophisticated in it’s writing than books like The Wizard of Oz or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The language is not simplified, the characters are not children and the story is not so short. This is a pretty sophisticated fantasy. Certainly not as big and complex as The Lord of the Rings, but still does not come across as a children’s book. Older children, say ten or older can handle it well enough, but it is still not the same as other juvenile fantasies I have read. The plot is complex, the characters are interesting and full, the world is fascinating. This story has everything you can want in a fantasy novel. Tolkien created his Middle Earth from his studies of Old English legends. But even those are told in a manner very different from a modern novel. This story is definitely a modern novel. Tolkien borrowed from the past, but he used it as the clay to build the foundation for modern fantasy. Nothing quite like this had been written before. The Hobbit deserves the reputation is has.
Videos
We have the story in these editions:
The Hobbit, hardcover, Houghton Mifflin, 1965-00-00
All of the stories in the Middle Earth series:
A Short Cut to Mushrooms
Again from Buckland to the Withywindle
“Ancient History”
“Arrival at Bree”
“At Rivendell”
“Delays Are Dangerous”
“From Hobbiton to the Woody End”
“From Weathertop to the Ford”
“In the House of Elrond”
“New Uncertainties and New Projections”
Of Gollum and the Ring
“Queries and Alterations”
“Return to Hobbiton”
“The Attack on Weathertop”
“The Barrow-Wight”
“The Mines of Moria”
“The Old Forest and the Withywindle”
The Ring Goes South
“The Third Phace: At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”
“The Third Phase: The Journey to Bree”
“The Third Phase: To Weathertop and Rivendell”
To Maggot’s Farm and Buckland
“Tom Bombadil”
“Trotter and the Journey to Weathertop”
The Later Quenta Silmarillion
“Maeglin”
“The Grey Annals”
“The Wanderings of Hurin”
“Ælfwine and Dírhaval”
“A Further Extract from the Quenta”
“A Passage Extracted from the Quenta”
“A Passage from the Sketch of the Mythology”
“Extract from the Lost Tale of the Nauglafring”
“The Morning and Evening Star”
“The Return of Beren and Lúthien According to the Quenta Noldorinwa”
“Bombadil Goes Boating”
“The Adventures of Tom Bambadil”
“Poems and Songs of Middle Earth”
The Hobbit or There and Back Again
The Children of Hurin
Quenta Silmarillion
Ainulindale
“Valaquenta”
“Akallabeth”
The Fall of Gondolin
“Prose Fragments Following the Lost Tales”
“The Earliest Silmarillion”
“The First Silmarillion Map”
“The Ambarkanta”
“The Earliest Annals of Beleriand”
“The Earliest Annals of Valinor”
“The Quenta”
“The Sketch of the Mythology”
“Quenta Silmarillion”
“Silmarillion II: Annals of Valinor”
“Silmarillion III: Annals of Beleriand”
“The Fall of Numenor”
“A Long-Expected Party”
