Chance compares the development and growth of Bilbo against other characters to the concepts of just kingship versus sinful kingship derived from the Ancrene Wisse (which Tolkien had written on in 1929), and a Christian understanding of Beowulf, a text that influenced Tolkien's writing. [100] Shippey comments that Bilbo is nothing like a king, and that Chance's talk of "types" just muddies the waters, though he agrees with her that there are "self-images of Tolkien" throughout his fiction; and she is right, too, in seeing Middle-earth as a balance between creativity and scholarship, "Germanic past and Christian present". [101] And in my tweet – mea culpa! – I simply took that mislabeled artwork argument as fact which it was not, as far as research can tell. Please accept my apologies. Bibliography As in plot and setting, Tolkien brings his literary theories to bear in forming characters and their interactions. He portrays Bilbo as a modern anachronism exploring an essentially antique world. Bilbo is able to negotiate and interact within this antique world because language and tradition make connections between the two worlds. For example, Gollum's riddles are taken from old historical sources, while those of Bilbo come from modern nursery books. It is the form of the riddle game, familiar to both, which allows Gollum and Bilbo to engage each other, rather than the content of the riddles themselves. This idea of a superficial contrast between characters' individual linguistic style, tone and sphere of interest, leading to an understanding of the deeper unity between the ancient and modern, is a recurring theme in The Hobbit. [33]

Lawrence, Elizabeth T. (1987). "Glory Road: Epic Romance As An Allegory of 20th Century History; The World Through The Eyes of J. R. R. Tolkien". Epic, Romance and the American Dream; 1987 Volume II. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute . Retrieved 15 June 2008. Carpenter, Humphrey (1977). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.a b Croft, Janet Brennan (2002). "The Great War and Tolkien's Memory, an examination of World War I themes in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings". Mythlore. 23 (4, article 2). a b Kocher, Paul (1974). Master of Middle-earth, the Achievement of J. R. R. Tolkien. Penguin Books. pp.31–32. It could be called Adventures of Tom Bombadil & other talesA collection of previously illustrated works with a few extra illustrations mixed in for padding, I could probably get behind that, because I agree the design/format is nice enough (though I'm still unsure on the green for Sil). Bramlett, Perry C.; Christopher, Joe R. (2003). I Am in Fact a Hobbit: An Introduction to the Life and Works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Mercer University Press. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-86554-894-7. Stevens, David; Stevens, Carol (2008). "The Hobbit". In Bloom, Harold (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien. Chelsea House. pp.17–26. ISBN 978-1-60413-146-8.

St. Clair, Gloriana (2000). "Tolkien's Cauldron: Northern Literature and The Lord of the Rings". Carnegie Mellon University. Yale University Library database entry for [Study of Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf]So, if you ask me Sendak never liked doing the illustrations for The Hobbit. He had become incredibly successful and popular when Where The Wild Things Are was published and probably no longer willing to just take on any old job to make the money – there was no need for it anymore. So he let it slip until the very last minute – the grand old freelancing artist strategy – and then sketched something in a couple of hours to send off to the publishers. No second picture, there was no need for it – and no proof of a second picture has ever been given. Faraci, Mary (2002). " 'I wish to speak' (Tolkien's voice in his Beowulf essay)". In Chance, Jane (ed.). Tolkien the Medievalist. Routledge. pp.58–59. ISBN 978-0-415-28944-3.Subsequent editions in English were published in 1951, 1966, 1978 and 1995. Numerous English-language editions of The Hobbit have been produced by several publishers, [46] making it one of the best-selling books of all time with over 100 million copies sold by 2012. [47] [48] [49] In addition, The Hobbit has been translated into over sixty languages, with more than one published version for some languages. [50] Revisions [ edit ] Navigable diagram of Tolkien's legendarium. The Hobbit began as a stand-alone story, but with the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien felt the need to bring it into closer alignment with that work. Clark, George; Timmons, Daniel (2000). J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 85–86. ISBN 978-0-313-30845-1.

Flieger, Verlyn (2005). Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology. Kent State University Press. p.67. ISBN 978-0-87338-824-5. Rateliff, John D. (2007). The History of the Hobbit. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-723555-1.The Hobbit". Boys into Books (11–14). Schools Library Association. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008 . Retrieved 4 January 2013.

See also: English-language editions of The Hobbit Dustcover of the first edition of The Hobbit, taken from a design by the author The group travels into the wild. Gandalf saves the company from trolls and leads them to Rivendell, where Elrond reveals more secrets from the map. When they attempt to cross the Misty Mountains, they are caught by goblins and driven deep underground. Although Gandalf rescues them, Bilbo gets separated from the others as they flee the goblins. Lost in the goblin tunnels, he stumbles across a mysterious ring and then encounters Gollum, who engages him in a game, each posing a riddle until one of them cannot solve it. If Bilbo wins, Gollum will show him the way out of the tunnels, but if he fails, his life will be forfeit. With the help of the ring, which confers invisibility, Bilbo escapes and rejoins the dwarves, improving his reputation with them. The goblins and Wargs give chase, but the company are saved by eagles. They rest in the house of Beorn. Tolkien’s second foray into the world was The Silmarillion but publishers rejected it as too dense – Tolkien agreed ‘they were quite right’ and later revised the text. He returned to his earlier notes for the three volumes ( The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King) that would become The Lord of the Rings, a book that was to take him fourteen years to write. consisting of essentially Poems and Stories + Bilbo’s Last Song + fold-out maps—all her Tolkien maps! In regard to the misidentification of the ‘wood-elves’ drawing, the correspondence between Houghton Mifflin and Allen & Unwin in January–February 1967 clearly refers to only one image sent by Austin Olney at Houghton Mifflin, received by Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin, and shown to Tolkien by Rayner Unwin: the picture of Gandalf and Bilbo. Tolkien saw it on 16 February 1967, and on 20 February Rayner wrote to Houghton Mifflin that Tolkien was not ‘wildly happy about the proportions of the figures’, Bilbo being too large relative to Gandalf. There is no indication that Tolkien saw a picture of dancing wood-elves, so any mislabelling ‘blunder’ was of no consequence. [ The Sendak Hobbit.]Since the author's death, two critical editions of The Hobbit have been published, providing commentary on the creation, emendation and development of the text. In his 1988 The Annotated Hobbit, Douglas Anderson provides the text of the published book alongside commentary and illustrations. Later editions added the text of " The Quest of Erebor". Anderson's commentary makes note of the sources Tolkien brought together in preparing the text, and chronicles the changes Tolkien made to the published editions. The text is accompanied by illustrations from foreign language editions, among them works by Tove Jansson. [64] Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull. The J.R.R. Tolkien companion and guide. Vol. 1, Chronology, p. 560 ff.; Vol. 2, Reader’s Guide, p. 561.