The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1958. Second Edition. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 0x0x0. Tolkien, J.R.R. 1958 sixth printing of the 1951 second edition, and the fifth printing to appear after the publication of The Lord of the Rings (surprisingly, only the tenth printing of the work overall). Lacks scarce original jacket, but includes facsimile jacket appropriate to this printing for display purposes. Spine toned, front board a bit soiled, faint stain on top and fore edge (only affects interior margins of last two pages), endpapers foxed, a couple minor spots on boards and edges. Binding tight, text clean and unmarked. 315 pp. Maps on endpapers, color frontispiece and black-and-white illustrations by J.R.R. Tolkien. The classic prelude to The Lord of the Rings. This second edition incorporates changes to the plot to update the mythology of the One Ring in anticipation of the release of The Lord of the Rings. The most important change, and an extremely significant one in terms of how we understand the story's characters today, was the corruption of Gollum by the ring. Tolkien would later edit the text again (though not as extensively) for the 1966 third edition, the version with which most of us are familiar. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." The hobbit-hole in question belongs to one Bilbo Baggins, an upstanding member of a 'little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves.' He is, like most of his kind, well off, well fed, and best pleased when sitting by his own fire with a pipe, a glass of good beer, and a meal to look forward to. Certainly this particular hobbit is the last person one would expect to see set off on a hazardous journey; indeed, when Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, 'looking for someone to share in an adventure,' Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit's doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure. The dwarves' goal is to return to their ancestral home in the Lonely Mountains and reclaim a stolen fortune from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, they and their reluctant companion meet giant spiders, hostile elves, ravening wolves--and, most perilous of all, a subterranean creature named Gollum from whom Bilbo wins a magical ring in a riddling contest. It is from this life-or-death game in the dark that J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, would eventually spring. Though The Hobbit is lighter in tone than the trilogy that follows, it has, like Bilbo Baggins himself, unexpected iron at its core. Don't be fooled by its fairy-tale demeanor; this is very much a story for adults, though older children will enjoy it, too. By the time Bilbo returns to his comfortable hobbit-hole, he is a different person altogether, well primed for the bigger adventures to come--and so is the reader.