The History of the Hobbit

by John D. Rateliff

  The contact point between Tolkien and Ransome was Stanley Unwin, Tolkien’s publisher, who had published at least four of Ransome’s many books in the early days of George Allen & Unwin: Six Weeks in Russia [1919], The Crisis in Russia [1921], Racundra’s First Cruise [1923], and The Chinese Puzzle [1927], as well as Ransome’s translation of Iury Libedinsky’s A Week [1923]. Unwin had shown considerable courage in publishing the 1919 book, which opposed the joint British-French-American invasion of Russia launched in that year in an attempt to topple the new Soviet regime and reinstate a Czarist government,5 and even though Ransome was now being published by the firm of Jonathan Cape they had apparently remained on good terms. Accordingly, Unwin sent Ransome a copy of the newly published Hobbit in the fall of 1937, and soon had the following excerpt of a letter from Ransome to pass along to Tolkien:

  Letter #1

  I sent a copy of THE HOBBIT to Arthur Ransome, who is temporarily laid up at a nursing home in Norwich, and he writes –

  ‘THE HOBBIT is my delight; great fun. Thank you for sending him. Do the author’s new coloured pictures include a portrait of Bilbo Baggins?

  Or does he refrain?’

  —Stanley Unwin to JRRT, letter of 15th December 1937,

  quoting Arthur Ransome’s letter to Unwin,

  (unpublished; A&U Archive).

  The ‘coloured pictures’ to which Ransome refers are the four colour plates added to the second printing of the Allen & Unwin edition, which according to Hammond’s Descriptive Bibliography (page 15) was ready for release on 19th December, although the official release date was a month later (25th January 1938). Clearly, Unwin had sent Ransome a copy of the first printing, which lacked any colour illustrations (other than the dust jacket).

  As a result of Unwin’s sending the book, Ransome also wrote to Tolkien himself (on 13th December 1937), although it is not known whether Ransome sent the following letter to Tolkien directly (e.g., having looked up his address in Who’s Who) or as an enclosure accompanying the preceding letter to Unwin.

  Letter #2

  Sir as a humble hobbit fancier (and one certain that your book will be many times reprinted) may I complain that on page 27 when Gandalf calls Bilbo an excitable hobbit the scribe (human no doubt) has written man by mistake? On page 112 Gandalf calls the goblins little boys, but he means it as an insult so that is no doubt all right. But on page 294 Thorin surely is misrepresented. Why his concern for men? Didn’t he say more of us, thinking of dwarves elves goblins and dragons and not of a species which to him must have been very unimportant. The error if it is an error is a natural one due again to the humanity of the scribe to whom we must all be grateful for this chronicle. I am sir yours respectfully

  Arthur Ransome6

  Aside from the complement inherent in receiving such a ‘fan letter’ from an established fellow author, Tolkien was clearly pleased not just by Ransome’s close attention to detail but by his entering into the spirit of the book and maintaining the fiction of Bilbo’s authorship and Tolkien’s pose as merely the translator of the ancient text (explicitly established in the runes bordering the dust jacket), as his response in kind on 15th December shows.7

  Letter #3

  Dear Mr. Ransome.

  I’m sure Mr. Baggins would agree in words such as he used to Thorin – to have been fancied by you, that is more than any hobbit could expect. The scribe too is delighted to be honoured by a note in your own hand, and by criticisms showing so close an acquaintance with the text. My reputation will go up with my children – the eldest are now rather to be classed as men, but on their shelves, winnowed of the chaff left behind in the nursery I notice that their ‘Ransomes’ remain.8

  You tempt me grievously to a mythological essay; but I restrain myself, since your criticisms are good even though the offending words may be defensible. For the history of the hobbit must come before many who have not before them the exact history of the world into which Mr. Baggins strayed; and it is unwise to raise issues of such import.

  I will replace man on p. 27 by the fellow of an earlier recension. On p. 1129 I agree in feeling that Gandalf’s insult was rather silly and not quite up to form – though of course he would regard the undeveloped males of all two legged species as boys. I’m afraid the blemish can hardly be got over by vocabulary, unless oaves would be an improvement? On p.294 I accept of us as a great improvement: men is there just a loose10 rendering of Thorin’s word for ‘people’ – the language of those days, unlike modern English, had a word that included the Two Kindreds (Elves and Men) and their likenesses and mockeries. ‘Of us’ exactly represents this: for Thorin certainly included ‘humans’ in his comment, for Elves and Dwarves were mightily concerned with them, and well aware that it was their fate to usurp the world; but he was not at that moment thinking chiefly of Men (with a capital). The ancient English, of course, would have felt no hesitation in using ‘man’ of elf, dwarf, goblin, troll, wizard or what not, since they were inclined to make Adam the father of them all . . .

  I must apologize for writing at such length. I hope you are well enough to endure it or forgive it, trusting that your address does not indicate a serious illness. I hope the enclosed list of other minor errors will serve to correct your copy – but, if there is a reprint (sales are not very great) I hope you will allow me to send you a corrected copy.

  Yours very respectfully . . .

  Ransome replied at once, making clear that whatever mythological premise underlay the word-choice it was for him a matter of decorum, what Tolkien himself would have called a slight flaw in the subcreation that sparked a momentary loss of secondary belief, that had motivated him to voice the objection.

  Letter #4

  To J. R. R. Tolkien

  Dec. 17 1937

  Norwich

  Dear Professor Tolkien,

  Thank you for your most interesting letter.

  BUT: I did not intend any criticism whatever of the ‘boys’ of p. 112. I mentioned it only to illustrate (by contrast) my slight discomfort due to ‘man’ on p. 27. And that discomfort had no relation to mythology. I had very much admired the delicate skill with which you had made Mr. Baggins so Hobbitty (forgive the word) and the word ‘man’ on p. 27 seemed a leak or a tear in the veil, undoing just a little of what you had done. That was all. I thought the word had slipped from the scribe’s pen by accident. The Hobbitness of Mr. Baggins seems to me one of the most difficult and triumphant achievements of the book . . . And so valuable that, regardless of mythology, it seemed worth while to complain about the one word which in one place, just for a moment, raised a faint doubt.

  I have copied your corrections into the book. Thank you for letting me have them.

  I had an operation nearly a month ago11 and hope to get out quite soon now. The Hobbit has done a great deal to turn these weeks into a pleasure. And as for new editions . . . there will be dozens of them: of that I have no doubt whatever.

  Yours sincerely,

  Arthur Ransome

  —Signalling from Mars, page 251.

  With that, the brief correspondence between the two men seems to have ceased – not, however, without having left its mark upon The Hobbit. The points Ransome had raised Tolkien at once passed along to Allen & Unwin, along with his proposed solutions:

  Letter #5

  P.S. . . . Mr Arthur Ransome objects to man on p. 27 (line 7 from end). Read fellow as in earlier recension? He also objects to more men on p. 294 l[ine] 11. Read more of us? Men with a capital is, I think, used in text when ‘human kind’ are specifically intended; and man, men with a minuscule are occasionally and loosely used as ‘adult male’ and ‘people’. But perhaps, although this can be mythologically defended (and is according to Anglo-Saxon usage!), it may be as well to avoid raising mythological issues outside the story. Mr Ransome also seems not to like Gandalf’s use of boys on p. 112 (lines 11, 13). But, though I agree that his insult was rather silly and not quite up to form, I do not think anything can be done about it
now. Unless oaves would do? JRRT.

  —JRRT to A & U, 19th December 1937; Letters p. 28.

  Of the three specific ‘cruxes’ raised by Ransome, it is interesting to note that Tolkien responded differently to each. The first, ‘excitable little man’, was indeed changed, not to Ransome’s proposed ‘excitable little hobbit’, but rather to ‘excitable little fellow’ (DAA.47 –48). That is, he agrees with Ransome’s criticism that the phrasing of the text needs changing but comes up with his own solution; the ‘earlier recension’ is of course a fiction referring to the framing device and Tolkien’s pose as translator, as comparison to the actual manuscript text (pp. 8 & 39) of this passage shows. The second, ‘naughty little boys’ (DAA.151–152), was ultimately allowed to stand, since neither Ransome nor Tolkien could find a satisfactory replacement. Tolkien’s proposed change of ‘boys’ to oaves (i.e., the plural of oaf) would have been extremely problematic, as he would have discovered when he investigated the etymology of the word, because oaves (more usually spelled oafs; earlier ouphes, aufs) in fact derives from elves and ties in with the old belief that a physically or mentally disabled child (e.g., one with Down’s Syndrome) was a changeling or ‘elf’ (oaf). Finally, for the third ‘crux’, the suggested replacement of ‘If more men . . . it would be a merrier world’ with ‘If more of us . . .’, Tolkien adopted Ransome’s correction directly (DAA.348), noting that it was ‘a great improvement’.

  Beyond these specific corrections, Ransome’s objection seems to have led Tolkien to refine his subsequent usage. Even though he had explained some of the concepts underlying his use of the generic men (more or less human-shaped creature) as opposed to the specific Men (human), Ransome had remained dubious, and Tolkien clearly came to agree with him and henceforth tended to avoid that generic usage, especially in the new book he was just starting, The Lord of the Rings. It is interesting to note that in his letter to Ransome, written just days before he began writing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien already lists wizards as a separate race distinct from human men. As for the ‘ancient English’ belief that all such beings were descendents of Adam, one of his primary sources here was no doubt the Beowulf-poet, who describes Grendel as a descendent of Cain (line 107a). Finally, the term ‘the Two Kindreds’ for the elder and younger children of Ilúvatar, Elves and Men, seems to have arisen in a revision to the 1930 Quenta (see HME IV.154 & 156); it was soon adopted into ‘the (Earliest) Annals of Beleriand’ (HME IV.306), ‘The Fall of Númenor’ (HME V.18), and the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion (e.g. HME V.302). Its presence here, in the context of The Hobbit, shows that already in the months immediately following the latter’s publication he was explicating details from it in terms of his legendarium and was concerned to show that they were in harmony, a process that reached its culmination with The Lord of the Rings.

  Finally, the list of ‘other minor errors’ Tolkien sent Ransome was probably the same ones he submitted to Allen & Unwin the following day (16th December 1937), too late for inclusion in the second printing; cf. Hammond’s Descriptive Bibliography pages 4, 7, & 15. However, researcher Lyn Mellone has discovered that Ransome’s copy of The Hobbit, now in the Ransome Room of the Museum of Lakeland Life in Kendal, Cumbria in the northwest corner of England, does indeed have the corrections he received from Tolkien carefully marked in the appropriate places in ink, with those proposed by Ransome (e.g. ‘excitable little hobbit’) in pencil.12 Some of these typographical corrections were fixed in the third and fourth printings (Descriptive Bibliography, page 16), but most had to wait until the fifth printing (the second edition) of 1951. Although Ransome was still alive (and in fact did not die until 1967, at the age of eighty-two), by this time Tolkien’s promise to send him ‘a corrected copy’ seems to have been forgotten. However, in their entry on Ransome in The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (Vol. II, pages 813–814), Scull & Hammond note that Tolkien did arrange to have Ransome sent an advance copy of The Lord of the Rings and that the recipient ‘read it enthusiastically’.

  Appendix V

  Author’s Copies List

  Like most authors, Tolkien received a number of author’s copies of his book when it was published, which he distributed to friends and family. By luck, a listing that represents his working out of who to give copies to survives, written in the flyleaf of the page proofs of the book (Marq. 1/2/3). While we cannot be certain that this list represents his final decisions, having been written at the time the text was finalized (February–March 1937) rather than at the time of the book’s release (21st September), we can confirm it on some points, since copies inscribed by Tolkien to some of these recipients have shown up at auctions in recent years. The Bodleian also holds a file of letters Tolkien received regarding The Hobbit (MS. Tolkien 21) which includes letters of thanks from many of those listed below, gratefully acknowledging the book’s arrival.

  Below I give the list (or more properly lists) as they appear on the flyleaf, complete with cancellations, and Tolkien’s notes to himself (e.g., ‘have’, indicating that the person in question already has a copy and so need not be sent a presentation copy from Tolkien’s limited stock), followed by a section in which I briefly identify the recipients, insofar as this is possible after the lapse of seventy-five years. In addition to the file of letters in the Bodleian, the following draws heavily on such sources as Tolkien’s letters (including unpublished letters in the Allen & Unwin archive), the Tolkien Family Album by John & Priscilla Tolkien [1992] (hereafter Family Album), Scull & Hammond’s J.R.R. Tolkien Companion & Guide, a list of identifications drawn up by Taum Santoski after a discussion of the topic with Christopher Tolkien, and some details provided to me by Priscilla Tolkien, to whom my thanks; I am grateful to Doug Anderson for providing some dates and correcting me on several points.

  The Hobbit

  Revise

  EVG: E. V. (Eric Valentine) Gordon, 1896–1938. A Canadian Rhodes Scholar, successively Tolkien’s student, colleague, and collaborator. Co-editor with Tolkien of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight [1925] and several unfinished projects, including editions of Pearl, ‘The Wanderer’, and ‘The Seafarer’. Contributor to Songs for the Philologists, and author, editor, or translator in his own right of An Introduction to Old Norse [1927], The Battle of Maldon [1937], and Scandinavian Archaeology [1937]. He succeeded Tolkien as Professor of English Language at Leeds and in 1930 became Smith Professor of English Language and Germanic Philology at Manchester in central England. Knighted by the King of Denmark for his contributions to Icelandic studies. His letter thanking Tolkien for this presentation copy, dated 23rd September 1937, is now in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 57). For more on Gordon, see Douglas A. Anderson’s ‘An Industrious Little Devil: E. V. Gordon as Friend and Collaborator with Tolkien’ in Tolkien the Medievalist, ed. Jane Chance [2003], pages 15–25; his photograph can be seen in the Family Album, page 47.

  C.S.L.: C. S. (‘Jack’) Lewis, 1898–1963. Co-founder with Tolkien of the Inklings, a tutor at Magdalen College Oxford, and at the time perhaps Tolkien’s closest friend. At the time of The Hobbit’s publication he had just published his first scholarly book, The Allegory of Love [1936], and would shortly publish his first work of fiction, Out of the Silent Planet [1938], which had originated in a bargain with Tolkien for them to each write a space-travel or time travel story (for more on this bargain, see my essay ‘The Lost Road, The Dark Tower, and The Notion Club Papers’ in Tolkien’s Legendarium, ed. Flieger & Hostetter [1996], pages 199–218). The first outside Tolkien’s immediate family to read The Hobbit, and contributor of one of the cover blurbs, he ultimately didn’t get a presentation copy because A&U sent him a review copy instead (hence his name’s cancellation in the list above); cf. Charles Furth’s letter to JRRT on 1st June 1937 promising to send Lewis an advance copy (A&U archive). His enthusiastic review (‘Prediction is dangerous, but The Hobbit may well prove a classic’) appeared in The Times Literary Supplement on 2nd October 1937 (reprinted in On Stories [1982], 81–2), followed by anothe
r in the Times itself on 8th October. The classic study of the ups and eventual downs of his friendship with Tolkien can be found in Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings [1978].

  Griffiths: Elaine Griffiths, 1909–1996. Student of JRRT’s, to whom had been entrusted the task of updating John R. Clark Hall’s translation of Beowulf for Allen & Unwin, with Tolkien to provide a new critical foreword on Old English prosody. Ultimately Griffiths failed to complete the project, which passed instead to Tolkien’s colleague C. L. Wrenn (see below). Griffiths however remained a longtime family friend; see Family Album page 69 for a brief but warm account, plus a photo. For more on Griffiths and The Hobbit, see pages xxxvi, xxxviii, 693–4, & 702 of this book; for an amusing audio account in her own voice of her role in bringing The Hobbit to the attention of a publisher, see J. R. R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait.

  Kilbride: K. M. (Katharine Mary) Kilbride, 1900–1966, a student of Tolkien’s at Leeds to whom he sent both The Hobbit and his essay ‘Beowulf: The Monsters & the Critics’ together. Her letter of thanks, reminiscing about the ‘real artistic talent’ in the English House at Leeds in the old days (‘what fun you must have had drawing out the maps’), is in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 66). Her inscribed copy, which included a passage in verse from The Lost Road (cf. HME V.44), was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in December 2002.

  Marjorie: Marjorie Incledon, 1891–1973. JRRT’s cousin, the elder daughter of his mother Mabel’s older sister, May Suffield Incledon. The creator, with her sister Mary, of ‘Animalic’, the first invented language to which Tolkien was exposed.