A 'darker' Hobbit

[davem]

Among all the fuss surrounding CoH we seem to have forgotten the other major Tolkien related publishing event of this year.

I found this on a search about the 'Mr Baggins: A History of the Hobbit' (the equivalent, I suppose of HoM-e for TH):

Originally Posted by John Rateliff

"The 1960 Hobbit has never been published but will be included in my forthcoming edition of The Hobbit manuscript. As I said in the footnote, it’s relatively brief but of great interest. In the meantime, if you’re not familiar with Tolkien’s other slightly earlier recasting of the material, "The Quest of Erebor", which appeared in Unfinished Tales, I suggest you look it up; other versions have since appeared in HME Vol. XII and in the revised edition of The Annotated Hobbit. The 1960 Hobbit would have been the Third Edition of the original book, had he carried through on the revisions, and would have changed the tone about as much as the 1947 rewrite of the Gollum chapter changes that section."

Mr Baggins is due to be published in two volumes in May & June.

I'm assuming that this '3rd edition' will basically show Tolkien's attempt to re-write TH along the lines of what we have in The Quest of Erebor. Of course, its difficult to discuss the details of a book that hasn't been published yet, but it just got me wondering whether we'd consider such a 're-write' as 'better' than the version we have. If Rateliff is correct that this version, if completed, would have been the '3rd Edition' then this 'darker' version would have replaced the one we have - in the same way that the 2nd edition would have replaced the 1st.

Would we have missed the 'lighter' version of the story - the 'children's book'? Personally, I'm looking forward to reading 'Mr Baggins' as much as CoH.

Any thoughts?

(Oh, & btw, there's a new edition of Mr Bliss out in October)

[The Might]

Interesting news davem, I for one enjoy the lighter version too, but I would definitely like to read this more recent one too.
Perhaps a sort of attempt to close the gap between the LotR and The Hobbit, as far as the language used or the style of writing is concerned. I enjoyed the chapter in the UT with all the extra-information, so I'll be looking forward to purchasing the book

[Lalwendë]

I'm perfectly happy with the version we have now to be honest, though of course I'll want to read this. I'm not sure if my contentment is due to familiarity or not, but I do know that the version I have read so often has a special place, and any new version wouldn't be able to take that away. A bit like 'New Coke' was never going to replace the original flavour I've grown to love. Sometimes, a rest is better than a change...

It's quite annoying actually that Tolkien was such a perfectionist - had he not been so obsessed with redrafting maybe he would have published more work in his lifetime? But then this begs the question, would it have been as good?

[Mithalwen]

I didn't know about this and I am delighted. I find The Hobbit cloying now- though I found it still "works" well read aloud to young children - and have often wished he had written a grown up version in the style of The Quest of Erebor which would fit better with the LOTR ..but then I also wish he had rewritten some of the early chapters to fit in with the rest of LOTR....

[Lalwendë]

Would you have been happy with it as a 'replacement' though? Because that would have been what happened - we'd simply not have the existing Hobbit, it would merely be a curious collector's item for sale at high prices on eBay (as V1 is now).

Did you read The Hobbit first? I've got the feeling you did? This does have a point....

Would kids who read The Hobbit at an early age as a 'kids' book' still be caught up with the same enthusiasm for Tolkien if they read a darker book? Would they read it at all? It's one of those books that any parent, no matter how 'puritanical', would feel comfortable giving to a child to read, but I'm not sure they would feel the same about a darker story.

The thought of having the early chapters of LotR re-written fills me with abject horror though!

I've absolutely NO problem with the Hobbit 'not fitting' - I mean, nor does the Sil, and thinking along those lines leaves us with a 'canon' of one book, which is just stupid to my mind. Few if any writers produced a lifetime's body of work which was entirely consistent in tone, voice and style, and I have no problem that Tolkien's work is the same. It's interesting rather than annoying to me.

[Mithalwen]

I have no problem with not fitting per se ... it is the fact that it is so much a children's book withall those asides that makes it just about unreadable for me now .let alone the Tralalalally Elves..... It seems to be the children's version of teh "real story".

Children love dark books - always have done ..... though I do wonder at the sanity of the parents who take very tiny children to the Harry Potter films.... especially latish showings.... but the Hobbit is already pretty dark and the most upsetting thing was the goblins eating the ponies (which Tolkien clearly realised given the high equine survival rate in LOTR). For my money the Barrow Wight and Old Man Willow are two of the scariest part of LOTR and that is in the "Hobbit style bit". It is not content but style...

[davem]

This is another interesting bit I found from Rateliff:

"It can hardly be coincidence that as late as 1940 (sic), when writing the
opening chapter of The Hobbit, Tolkien felt free to include not only
references to Beren,... [more of his mythology]... but also to the Gobi
Desert, Hindu Kush, and "the Wild were-Worms of the Chinese" as part of
Bilbo's world.

Clearly here we are dealing with the first draft of the story, & these primary world references were removed before the story was sent to the publisher. But one can see a continuum here - we have at the start a very 'fairystoryish' world, filled with references to 'exotic' places like the Hindu Kush & the Gobi Desert, & at the end, by the time of the proposed '3rd edition' an attempt to fully integrate TH into the Legendarium, not just in terms of style, but also of language.

I think in a way we can see the process repeated in LotR - the early chapters, as Mith points out, are very close in style to TH as we have it, while by the end we are completely in the world of the Sil. Hence, if this 3rd ed. of TH had been completed One can only assume that the early chapters (or at least the first chapter) of LotR would also have required re-writing as that would have seemed 'out of place'.

Lal's point is interesting - given a 3rd ed Hobbit would have replaced the one we have, how many fans would have been drawn into Tolkien's world? Would any of us really want to sacrifice that innocent world, where there was less noise & more green, simply to have something that 'fitted' better with LotR? Its not so much the 'darker' style that would have 'excluded' children, perhaps, as the more adult style & language that would have resulted - its not a book that parents would have chosen to read to their children.

And of course, one would have to wonder (given the reaction of A&U's reader to the Sil legends Tolkien offered as a sequel to TH) whether, if TH had been in a more 'adult' style in the first place, we'd have anything of Middle-earth at all. It seems that publishers were much more 'tolerant' of 'fantastical' literature back then when it was aimed at children (not discounting, of course, the works of Dunsany & Morris).

[obloquy]

Hopefully this updated version will make it possible to take the story more seriously in our discussions here. As it is, it's way too old to be relevant to the post-LotR Middle-earth. There might actually be some useful information about dragons, Mirkwood elves, the Necromancer or Beorn in this revision.

[The Sixth Wizard]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I'm perfectly happy with the version we have now to be honest, though of course I'll want to read this. I'm not sure if my contentment is due to familiarity or not, but I do know that the version I have read so often has a special place, and any new version wouldn't be able to take that away. A bit like 'New Coke' was never going to replace the original flavour I've grown to love. Sometimes, a rest is better than a change...

It's quite annoying actually that Tolkien was such a perfectionist - had he not been so obsessed with redrafting maybe he would have published more work in his lifetime? But then this begs the question, would it have been as good?

That's a good point and I've wondered about it before, but unlike us, most people have trouble reading LOTR, let alone all the other manuscripts etc that we drag up. I think it's better to have used a lot of time on one story and made it amazing, than skimp for economics and make it many average ones.

I think that's why the LOTR movies were so good, they actually wanted to make a good movie, shot on location, with handmade armour and stuff etc. You could argue that the actual SCRIPTS were rubbish but at least it looks good...