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| - The precursor to The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, is also the story of Bilbo Baggins, a simple, respectable little person who is content with his sleepy life in Hobbiton until a crafty old wizard named Gandalf and thirteen dwarves hijack him for a grand adventure to slay a dragon and win back a lost treasure, forcing him to grow out of his comfortable little world. Along the way he encounters merry elves, ferocious trolls, wicked goblins, giant spiders, and other fantastic characters and creatures before coming face to face with the terrible dragon himself.
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| abstract
| - The precursor to The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, is also the story of Bilbo Baggins, a simple, respectable little person who is content with his sleepy life in Hobbiton until a crafty old wizard named Gandalf and thirteen dwarves hijack him for a grand adventure to slay a dragon and win back a lost treasure, forcing him to grow out of his comfortable little world. Along the way he encounters merry elves, ferocious trolls, wicked goblins, giant spiders, and other fantastic characters and creatures before coming face to face with the terrible dragon himself. JRR Tolkien wrote the story in the late 1920s to amuse his three sons. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim. The book has sold an estimated 100 million copies worldwide since first publication and along with its sequel is the Trope Maker for High Fantasy. A sequel was requested by his publishers, and as work on The Lord of the Rings progressed, Tolkien made accommodations for it in Chapter 5 of The Hobbit. These few but significant changes were integrated into the second edition. Further editions followed, correcting minor errors and reflecting Tolkien's changing concept of the world into which Bilbo stumbled (removing references to policemen, for example). The work has not been out of print since the paper shortages during the Second World War. Adaptations include:
* A 1966 short film directed by Gene Deitch, made as an Ashcan Copy (more info here). According to Deitch it was screened only once in June 1966 to an audience of about six people (to fulfill the part of the contract saying the film had to be shown in public). Despite being the only screen adaptation of Tolkien's work produced when he was still alive, he never saw it (leading Deitch to say "Thank God!")
* A 1968 BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation in 8 half-hour episodes. The master tapes for this were wiped in the '70s (a routine event for the BBC in this period) but a domestic recording was later recovered and used to re-issue the series.
* A 1977 animated TV special by Rankin-Bass; your mileage may vary in regard to how successful it is. At least they used top-flight voice talent, and much of the music was based directly on songs in the book. It was also one of the first major Japanese crossover animations, and many of the artists went on to found Studio Ghibli.
* A 2012/2013 live-action movie in two parts (subtitled An Unexpected Journey and There and Back Again), directed by Peter Jackson as a prequel to his The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
* Several video-game versions: there's an Interactive Fiction game of The Hobbit, which is considered to be one of the defining entries in the genre, and a video game made in 2003.
* A highly regarded Graphic Novel version approved by the Tolkien estate, illustrated by David Wenzel in 1991.
* There and Back Again by Pat Murphy, which is The Hobbit IN SPACE!
* A very low budget live-action version made in 1984 in Soviet Russia, as seen here. The same article also links to the Soviet version of the novel, with its uniquely styled illustrations.
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