J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published in London - September 21st, 1937

On this day in 1937, the first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, went on sale in British bookstores.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that takes you on a journey to the
past and back again. I'm Gab Louizier, and in this
episode we're talking about the day when readers took their
first steps into the rich, exciting world of Middle Earth.

(00:28):
The day was September one, the first edition of J. R. R.
Tolkien's The Hobbit went on sale in British bookstores. It
featured many black and white illustrations and maps drawn by
Tolkien himself, and it followed the story of a home
body hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, who joins a quest to

(00:50):
win the treasure of a fearsome dragon named Smug. The
book garnered enthusiastic reviews from the start, and by December,
the modest for printing of fifteen hundred copies had completely
sold out. Tolkien had begun writing the novel several years earlier,
though unintentionally at first. At the time, he was working

(01:12):
as a professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford University, and
one summer, while grading test papers, inspiration struck and he
famously jotted down the novel's first line, in a hole
in the ground, there lived a hobbit in nt Tolkien
recounted this fateful day himself, saying, quote, I can still

(01:33):
see the corner of my house in twenty Northmore Road
where it happened. I had an enormous pile of exam
papers there. Marketing school examinations in the summertime is very
laborious and unfortunately also boring. And I remember picking up
a paper and actually finding I nearly gave an extra
mark for it, an extra five marks. Actually, there was

(01:56):
one page of this particular paper that was left blank, glorious,
nothing to read, so I scribbled on it. Although the
author never mentioned which day or even which year this
scribbling took place, many Tolkien scholars believe it was during
the summer of nineteen thirty. At first, Tolkien stopped it

(02:18):
just that one line and didn't write anything further. But
in the years ahead he kept returning to the question
of what exactly a hobbit was and how it might live.
To settle the matter, he began writing The Hobbit subtitled
There and Back Again, which ultimately became an introduction to
an entire fantasy world all his own Middle Earth. Tolkien

(02:43):
worked on the book in stops and starts throughout the
early nineteen thirties. He shared his early manuscript with a
close group of fellow academics and friends, including authors C. S. Lewis.
When the manuscript was being passed around, it eventually made
its way into the hands of the tenure old son
of publishers Stanley Unwin. The boy wrote a review of

(03:04):
the novel for his father in exchange for a shilling,
and it was so positive that it convinced Unwin to
publish it. Although published as a children's fairy tale, the
Hobbit was more complex and sophisticated than other works in
the genre, complete with its own in world species, locations, languages,
and legends. This was due in large parts to Tolkien's

(03:27):
personal fascination with the writings and languages of Norse and
Anglo Saxon tradition. Many names and words found in The
Hobbit are adapted from Norse mythology, and some plot details
are seemingly inspired by the Old English epic poem Beowulf,
which Tolkien himself had translated and lectured on in the
nineteen twenties, featuring detailed information on calendars, moon phases, and

(03:53):
geographical descriptions that aligned with the included maps. The novel
certainly didn't talk down onto its target audience. Tolkien believed
that humans had a primal appetite for myth, and his
book sought to revive and satisfy that appetite in a
younger generation. Because of The Hobbit success, Tolkien's publishers asked

(04:15):
him to write more books that in the world of
Middle Earth. Tolkien delivered a draft of what would later
become The sill Marillion, a collection of stories set in
the same universe as The Hobbit, but focus more on
different lands, species, and characters. The publishers rejected the proposal,
saying it was too obscure and too different from the

(04:38):
preceding work they like. The public wanted more stories about Hobbits,
so Tolkien obliged and began writing what he called The
New Hobbit, though of course we know it better today
as The Lord of the Rings. If you were lucky
enough to track down a first edition copy of The
Hobbit today, you might be surprised to learn that it

(05:00):
doesn't quite match the story as you know it. That's
because Tolkien later made considerable changes to the Hobbits text
so that the story would better align with that of
the Lord of the Rings trilogy. These revisions first appeared
in the second edition of the book, which was published
in nine One of the most notable changes relates to

(05:21):
the interaction between Bilbo Baggins and the cave dwelling Gollum.
In the first edition, the characters part ways on good
terms and Gollum doesn't try to retake the ring from Bilbo. Initially,
Tolkien planned an even broader revision to The Hobbit. He
wanted to change the book's playful tone to match the

(05:42):
more serious tone of his Rings trilogy, but thankfully for
Hobbit fans, he abandoned this effort after the third chapter,
after he realized it just didn't feel like the Hobbit anymore.
In the end, it's good that Tolkien left well enough alone.
Readers love the book just as it was, and they
still do today. Over the years, the Hobbit has been

(06:05):
translated into more than fifty different languages, and it's sold
more than a hundred million copies worldwide. I'm Gabe Louizier,
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you've got a minute,
consider following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t

(06:25):
d I HC Show, And if you have any feedback
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this day at I heeart media dot com. Thanks to
Chandler May's for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in History class. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

(06:55):
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