@icedmagentalilacs
(March 2023)
By J.R. R. Tolkien and John D. Rateliff
Brand new deluxe edition of this definitive companion to The Hobbit, quarter-bound, stamped in gold foil with a unique design inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s own artwork, featuring a ribbon marker and exclusive foldout poster, and housed in a matching custom-built slipcase.
The Hobbit was first published on 21 September 1937. Like its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, it is a story that ‘grew in the telling’, and many characters and plot threads in the published text are quite different from the story J.R.R. Tolkien first wrote to read aloud to his young sons as one of their ‘fireside reads’.
Together in one volume, The History of the Hobbit presents the complete text of the unpublished manuscript of The Hobbit, accompanied by John Rateliff’s lively and informative account of how the book came to be written and published. Recording the numerous changes made to the story both before and after publication, he examines – chapter by chapter – why those changes were made and how they reflect Tolkien’s ever-growing concept of Middle-earth.