The Hobbit is 87 years old today

[Bêthberry]

The years are creeping up on The Hobbit. It was published September 21, 1937, at the tail end of a decade that saw the worst economic depression in the Western world. Yet its ethos was hardly that of doom, gloom, and depression. It was eagerly received and well regarded.Words such as "marvellous" and "freshly original" found their way into reviews, as well as the claim that it was destined to be a classic of children's literature. Now, it is seen as more than simply a children's book but as a narrative which shaped a culture in surprising ways.

What was the context in which you first read The Hobbit and did that context influence your reading of the book? Now that you are older, and possibly wiser, and living through the tumultuous and unstable times of the 21st century, does that world context influence how you read Bilbo's story now? Instead of being young and fresh, has it gone gracefully into an old age of seniority?

[Morthoron]

Actually, I started somewhat late, considering the era. I was a young teen, it was 1973, and I happened to see Tolkien's obituary in the Detroit Free Press. The obit was a full page with a photo of Tolkien surrounded by illustrations of Hobbits, Dwarves and other various characters of Middle-earth.

I had a natural affinity for mythology as a youth (Greek, Norse, the Mabinogion, etc.), and so I was intrigued. I borrowed The Hobbit from the school library, ran through it in a day and was immediately hooked. Soon I completed The Lord of the Rings and I was well on my way down the endless paths of Middle-earth. I remember waiting with anticipation the publishing of The Silmarillion in 1977 and I purchased a copy upon its release in the States. I still have that hardbound copy.

Is it still fresh? Truth be told, inundated by the various Jackson films I didn't read The Hobbit and LotR for many years thereafter (I needed to eliminate the faces of the actors from the characters they portrayed), and stuck with reading and re-reading the various HoME books, The Letters and other publications from C. Tolkien. I suppose a serious re-read is in order now that I am in my 60s and the glamour of Hollywood has been washed clean -- although the sense of wonder may never return fully from the first time I was enthralled by the series.

[Mithadan]

I first read The Hobbit when I was 10 or 11. I was a science fiction fan and decided I wanted to try fantasy and had heard that Tolkien was the best. I was unaware that there was a "sequel" until about a year later.

While I still occasionally read The Hobbit, doing so is more part of a tradition and I enjoy it a bit less because the writing style is less adult than LoTR, The Silmarillion, etc. Tolkien was writing to a target audience, after all. I believe that to a first-time reader (and probably also to a repeat reader who had not read it so often), it would still be "fresh."

[Bingo]

I was around 8 maybe, and found it on a shelf. My parents never told me about it, that I can recall. It was the one with Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves as the cover, and I thought it looked interesting, so I started reading and instantly loved it. It was the book I'd always wanted but never knew existed.

Now that I've read it I don't know how many times, I can appreciate the moral depth that I didn't see at first. When I was younger I thought Thorin was treated badly. Later I realized it's not that simple.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I ran into it in the little post library in Oberammergau; I was 9 or 10. I had read through all of Baum's Oz books (they had beautiful deluxe first editions, with tooled leather covers, green-gold ink and the most marvellous art-nouveau illustrations), and I asked the librarian if they had "anything else like that". She took me To The Hobbit and I was off.

(This was an edition with no LR blurb in it, so it was a while before I learned it had a sequel!)

[Bêthberry]

Interesting responses all. Thank you. I have a new context that differs from those of yours.

It was reading The Hobbit to my children. I hadn't realised at the time that I was possibly 'seeing' it as Tolkien had, through the eyes of his children. Now, years later, I wonder if my son's and then my daughter's reactions were similar to those of Christopher and the other Tolkien boys. Interestingly, The Hobbit remains the favourite of my daughter, who does not really like LotR, while my son I suspect favours The Silm. I can't recall ever reading anything whether Tolkien read it to Priscilla as a child or what her response was. Possibly I've missed something or forgotten some details of what I have read on Tolkien.

After I posted this thread, I received an email about a Tolkien blog that I follow, written by Tom Emanuel, who is a minister in the American United Church of Christ and also currently a doctoral student in fantasy at the University of Glascow. His interest is how reading LotR has molded its readers, including himself. I know quite a few here are not particularly interested in academic work on Tolkien--all well and good, there are many ways to enjoy his work--but he begins with his story of his first reading of Tolkien to his infant son and then moves into questions of why we "re-immerse ourselves in Middle-Earth", "The Tale We've Fallen Into: Reading The Lord of the Rings, Rereading Ourselves." The video is an enjoyable performance. Don't let the title of the blog throw you off. It simply means analysing Tolkien in different contexts, outside the normative.

https://queerandback.substack.com/p/...-jYLGWdrChHEhQ

[Snowdog]

I was 17 when I read The Hobbit in early summer 1975. I had just completed my junior year of high school and summer was in full swing in Seattle. I was walking about with my neighbor one night, and as we shared some pipeweed all rolled up in a ZigZag, he told me about this book he just read and enjoyed very much called The Hobbit. I asked what a Hobbit was, and he told me they were short care-free folk who like eating, drinking, & smoking! Said I'd be interested in reading it since I had just recently finished one of Asimov's Foundation books and wanted something different to read.

So he loaned me the Hobbit paperback and said he was starting on the Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring. I Read through The Hobbit and liked it, but thought it to be a bit juvenile.

He then loaned me Fellowship and said it's a bit darker and not so playful as The Hobbit. I enjoyed it much more. I read the rest of the Lord of the Rings trilogy through the rest of 1975. I was 21 when I read the Silmarillion, and was 27 when I read Unfinished Tales.

Oddly, I have only read The Hobbit all the way through only that one time. I've read Lord of the Rings countless times along with Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion and Children of Hurin. Not sure why The Hobbit doesn't have that same magnetism for me.

The context of the time when I read The Hobbit in 1975 was that of a post-Watergate, recently post-Vietnam War economic stagnation that was the USA at the time. I was partying, and the bicentennial hype was building. Going through the door to Middle Earth via Bag End was a refreshing reassurance, and at the time I didn't realize it would affect the rest of my life with a love for Middle Earth that it instilled in me.

[Formendacil]

I first read The Hobbit when I was about 9 or 10. My dad had The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and [/i]Unfinished Tales[/i] from the late 70s and early 80s on the bookshelves in our basement, and I was the kind of voracious reader then (would that I still were!) that was constantly in need of new things to read. I had burned through Narnia the year before, and it came closer to scratching the itch of "this is the perfect story," so I was primed to read more fantasy, and something I'd read in the non-fiction vein about Lewis had mentioned his friendship with Tolkien, so I recognised the name when I found it on my Dad's shelves and was predisposed to give it a try.

It turns out that Narnia was just the gateway drug--within a year or so, I had read not just The Hobbit, but also burned through The Lord of the Rings (more than once) and embarked on The Silmarillion (which was hard at like... 10-11 years old, but I persevered anyway).

The Hobbit itself is sort of lost in the shadows of Tolkien's two great works for me: if it hadn't been the gateway to publication for them both, I don't think it would be nearly as well-remembered today, though I suspect it would not have gone out of circulation long, if at all. It still holds up for what it is: an adventure story coloured with wonder and a final note of loss, and because it takes its own world so seriously, it doesn't feel as dated as other things written in 1930s might: i.e. it's not a mess of references we no longer get.

For myself, as I approach middle-age, I find that I appreciate the protagonist being a middle-aged homebody more: Bilbo's longing to just be at home, enjoying his own bed and good food, has some currency in my life, and maybe there's also some still-applicable lesson in being amazed at the adventures of life I find myself in anyway.