The Hobbit Paperback

$85.00
By Moons Rare Books

6W J. R. R. Tolkien. London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1979. 

Notes

The Hobbit follows Bilbo Baggins, a comfortable, completely unadventurous hobbit who is swept out of his cozy hole in the Shire by the wizard Gandalf and a company of thirteen dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield. Embarking on a perilous quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its vast treasure from the fearsome dragon Smaug, Bilbo journeys across a rich prehistoric landscape populated by elves, goblins, and trolls. Along the way, he undergoes a profound psychological transformation from a timid homebody into a courageous, resourceful leader—a development crystallized when he outwits the wretched creature Gollum in a high-stakes riddle contest and unknowingly gains possession of a magical, invisibility-granting ring. Written with a charming, conversational narrative voice that masterfully balances lighthearted humor with a haunting sense of ancient history, the novel effectively shattered the traditional moralistic conventions of children's literature, establishing the core archetypes, languages, and thematic foundations that would directly pave the way for its epic sequel, The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien (1892–1973), was a brilliant Oxford philologist and professor of Old English who viewed his fictional mythos as a vast linguistic playground. Rather than merely inventing a story and populating it with monsters, Tolkien spent decades meticulously constructing entire language families—most notably the elvish tongues of Quenya and Sindarin—and subsequently built the history, geography, and cultures of Middle-earth simply to give his invented words a living context. Written over a grueling twelve-year period that spanned the dark anxieties of World War II, the work was deeply colored by Tolkien’s own traumatic combat experiences during the Battle of the Somme, a reality that infused his prose with a haunting sense of historical grief and a poignant melancholy for a fading world.

Description

Crisp paperback featuring Tolkien’s art on the cover. Some creasing to cover and sun fading to spine. Browning to pages. 
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