The History of the Hobbit

Praise for The Hobbit:‘The Hobbit belongs to a very small class of books which have nothing in common save that each admits us to a world of its own. Its place is with Alice and The Wind in the Willows’Times Literary Supplement

‘One of the best loved characters in English fiction… a marvellous fantasy adventure’Daily Mail

‘Finely written saga of dwarves and elves, fearsome goblins and trolls… an exciting epic of travel, magical adventure, working up to a devastating climax’The Observer

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was a distinguished academic, though he is best known for writing The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, plus other stories and essays. His books have been translated into over 60 languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide.

John D. Rateliff, possibly the only Tolkien scholar to hail from Magnolia, Arkansas, moved to Wisconsin in 1981 in order to work with the Tolkien manuscripts at Marquette University, where he received his Ph.D. with a dissertation on Lord Dunsany. He has been active in Tolkien scholarship for many years, helping to organize two major Tolkien conferences and delivering papers on Tolkien, Dunsany, Eddison, the Inklings, and other fantasy writers. While at Marquette, he assisted in the collation of their holdings with those that Christopher Tolkien was editing for volumes VI to IX of the History of Middle-earth series. In addition to writing a column on “Classics of Fantasy”, he has contributed to such volumes as Tolkien’s Legendarium and the Blackwelder festschrift The Lord of the Rings: 1954-2004. A professional editor, he lives in the Seattle area with his wife and three cats, only one of whom is named after a Tolkien character.