Tolkien was a tinkerer when it came to his writings. Fans need look no further than
his first age stories to see the different revisions and versions some of these tales
went through. Some are quite different in both the tale itself - and even the narrative style.
By now, many fans probably realize that Tolkien made changes to The Hobbit between the first and
second editions to have things line up with the upcoming The Lord of the Rings. Most notably,
Gollum goes from willingly giving the ring to Bilbo to cursing him as a thief.
But what many fans may not know is this was not the last time Tolkien would
seek to edit and expand his first great Middle-earth book. In 1960,
5 years after The Return of the King is published, Tolkien sought to bring The Hobbit more in line
with The Lord of the Rings - not just in terms of the lore, but in tone and style.
Realizing with the second edition the viability of returning to Bilbo’s story, Tolkien had, in 1954,
written The Quest of Erebor - a chapter-length summary of the events of The Hobbit, but told
from Gandalf’s perspective. The tale, originally intended to be part of the Appendices of The Lord
of the Rings, sees Gandalf recounting the tale to the surviving Fellowship members in Minas Tirith
after the coronation of Aragorn as king. While it would not make the cut for the Appendices,
it would later be published as its own chapter in Unfinished Tales.
So what would Tolkien change in his 1960 effort to completely rewrite the Hobbit? One of the first
things is one of the most distinct differences between his two great books - the narrator.
Readers of the Hobbit will recall that the book’s narrator frequently makes comments that don’t
particularly mesh with what we experience in The Lord of the Rings. The narrator says things like
Such sentences and commentary from a narrator work great in a whimsical childrens tale,
but understandably, Tolkien felt the need to cut
the vast majority of the narrator from the revised version. With this removal,
we also get the omission of the more modern references found in the book. For instance,
the narrator describes Gandalf’s fireworks saying “The dragon passed like an express train.”
A new character we get to meet in the 1960 Hobbit is Gandalf’s horse. However,
with this tale occurring 77 years prior to the War of the Ring,
Shadowfax naturally isn’t around yet. Instead, Gandalf has a horse named Rohald,
who was lent to him by Elrond. Bilbo would observe: Gandalf used no stirrups,
and seldom held the reins: Rohald answered his commands, spoken softly in a strange tongue.
Another early change is in the character of Thorin. As noted in The History of The
Hobbit by John D Rateliff, where you can find all three rewritten chapters,
Thorin is much more abrupt especially regarding Bilbo and shows great concern
over property - anticipating his later fall to dragon sickness.
he said, handing the map to Thorin with a bow.
It’s worth noting that Thorin’s greater suspicion of Bilbo brings
him more in line with the previously mentioned Quest of Erebor chapter. We
also find Bilbo to be a bit more foolish than he comes off in the original text.
In the Second Chapter, entitled The Broken Bridge, we see Tolkien attempt to match The
Hobbit with The Lord of the Rings geographically. Since Frodo’s journey is quite well documented,
and covers virtually the same route to Rivendell as Bilbo’s,
it would make sense to fill out the latter. They leave at a leisurely pace from Bag End,
staying in good inns along their way, and passing other dwarves on the road. A day
or two after crossing the Brandywine Bridge, they come to Bree where they stay at the Prancing Pony.
The following day, they come to the Last Inn, also called the Forsaken Inn,
as they find it deserted, and they camp within its ruins. But the biggest addition
in this chapter is a sequence where the company comes to the Last Bridge to find
it broken. This is the very bridge where Glorfindel would later drive off three
ringwraiths and leave a green beryl as a sign for Aragorn that the bridge was safe.
With the bridge broken, the company must ford the river Hoarwell. The dwarves and their
ponies cross the river, when we see Thorin’s patience for Bilbo once again quite thin…
Thorin mopped his face, wet with sweat, rain and spray.
They had quite forgotten poor Bilbo! There he was still
on the other side, sitting and shivering, more frightened than he had yet been in his life.
After all are across, Bombur’s pony bolts back toward the river, and in the confusion,
Fili and Kili are nearly drowned and the pony is saved from the water at the cost of most
of its baggage - which turns out to be the best part of the company’s food supplies. Once again,
we see Gandalf speak to Rohald, who neighs loudly and seems to calm the restless ponies.
Another thing noted in The History of the Hobbit is that Tolkien sought to further
fill out the individual dwarf characters. Kili and Fili spring into action when the
pony bolts into the water, Bombur is more fumbling and grumbling,
and Balin is more hesitant about the woods north of the road - establishing his good
judgment - for just as in the original book, they would come face to face with three trolls.
After their troll encounter, they again find the troll hoard, where there are three mighty blades:
Gandalf took one, and presented the other to Thorin. To Bilbo he gave a knife with
a silver pommel. ‘A gift for a good hobbit!’ he said with a bow, which pleased Bilbo very much,
though he did not himself feel that he had earned any praise. He looked at the knife:
it had a sheath of black figured leather, and when he drew it,
he saw that the blade was bright and unstained. It was long enough to serve a hobbit as a sword.
half drawing the swords and examining them closely.
Note here the addition of black blood on both Orcrist and Glamdring - the two
swords which already possess runes. Likely filling a potential plothole that Gandalf
would no doubt have been capable of reading elvish runes without Elrond’s aid. Here,
they simply need cleaned before such analysis can be given.
We also find out that as Gandalf is scouting ahead,
he meets two of Elrond’s people from Rivendell. From them he finds out that
the Rangers were about and that they feared three trolls had settled in the woods where
Gandalf had left the dwarves. Realizing the peril, Gandalf decided to go back quickly,
where he is able to rescue the company. Not only does this give us some background into
Gandalf’s time “looking ahead”, but we also get the reference to the Dunedain Rangers.
In the third chapter, Arrival in Rivendell, we find a much shorter passage - not a full
chapter like the previous two. Here, we find Gandalf makes mention that few dwarves have
ever seen the valley of Rivendell, which Rateliff notes is a slight tweak from what
he originally wrote in this 1960 rewrite - saying no dwarf has looked upon the valley of Rivendell,
meaning that Thorin and Company are the first dwarves to come to Imladris. In the rewrite,
it is also made known that the dwarves are not particularly welcome in Rivendell in an effort
to bring it more in line with how the elves of Lorien react to Gimli’s presence in their realm.
However, it is here that Tolkien would abandon his efforts to do a rewrite of The Hobbit. In
his book, Rateliff brings up later bits of the story, wondering how Tolkien might have
expanded on them. Did Bilbo begin his friendship with Aragorn by meeting the now 10-year-old in
Rivendell? Did Legolas fight in the Battle of Five Armies? Would we have learned more
of Radagast? Would the spiders of Mirkwood have been more horrific like Shelob? Would
Balin’s visit to Bag End in the Epilogue have included a mention of his aspirations
for re-establishing Moria? And would the ring have been a more sinister presence throughout
the book, perhaps with hints of corruptive influence on Bilbo as the story progressed?
As Rateliff also points out - these are questions we will never know the answers to. And we further
learn from Christopher Tolkien why this effort was abandoned. He says that his father lent
these chapters to a friend to get an outside opinion on them. As History of the Hobbit states:
We do not know this person’s identity, but apparently her response was something along
the lines of ‘this is wonderful, but it’s not The Hobbit’. She must
have been someone whose judgment Tolkien respected, for he abandoned the work and
decided to let The Hobbit retain its own autonomy and voice rather than completely
incorporate it into The Lord of the Rings as a lesser ‘prelude’ to the greater work.
Yet, these writings, also known as The Fifth Phase, would not be the last time Tolkien
would make tweaks to The Hobbit. Due to a rather wild copyright loophole in the US,
a company called ACE Books was able to publish an unauthorized print of The
Lord of the Rings. This development, worthy of a video itself, led Tolkien’s publishers
to request new editions of both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. For The Lord of the Rings,
Tolkien revised the appendices, expanded the prologue, added an index, and a new foreword.
Turning to The Hobbit, Tolkien made a few small changes, but nothing on the scale of
his 1960 rewrite. Indeed, it is believed that Tolkien had so fully set aside this
attempt that he didn’t reference any of it in making this 1966 3rd edition of the book.
In the third edition, we find smaller changes like Erebor being founded by Thrain I,
many years before the time of its original founder Thror,
grandfather of Thorin. Tolkien also took the opportunity to eliminate the use of
the word Gnomes to refer to elves. This not only brought it in line with the Lord of the Rings,
but the ever present project of his passion, the book he would strive all his life to
write and publish, yet would never do so in his lifetime - The Silmarillion.
If you haven’t already, I highly suggest checking out both The History of the
Hobbit and The Annotated Hobbit - both are phenomenal resources that give you
a peek behind the curtain at the creation of Tolkien’s first great Middle-earth book.
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