“In a hole in the
ground there lived a hobbit.”
Professor
Tolkien doodled these words in a blue book while grading an exam for his
students at Oxford University.
Maybe he thought this would be a good way to
start one of his short stories. He certainly had no way of knowing that this
sentence and the story to follow would grow and grow until it would take over
most of his life.
With those simple words, he took the first steps of a journey—and as
he taught us, “The road goes ever on and on / down from the path where it began…”
Tolkien’s engaging
description of hobbit holes and the folk who inhabit them began a delightful fantasy
novel called The Hobbit, published in
1937. It featured Bilbo Baggins, who
like all self-respecting hobbits preferred the comforts of home to those “nasty,
uncomfortable things” called adventures.
 |
| First Edition of The Hobbit |
Yet after “an unexpected party,” Bilbo
winds up on just such an adventure—with thirteen dwarves on a quest to reclaim
their lost home and treasure. And just to mix it up, Professor Tolkien throws
in a wizard, a dragon, and a magic ring. A perfect recipe for mythic mayhem.
The Hobbit was followed
by The Lord of the Rings trilogy, published as a series of three books,
although it is really one honking big epic story. The main character of LOTR is
Frodo Baggins, Bilbo’s nephew, who is charged with a great quest to deal with the ring
Bilbo found in The Hobbit.
 |
| First edition of Book One of LOTR |
The Lord of the Rings was written between 1937 and 1949, much of it
during World War II—and published in 1954 and 1955. After his father’s death in
1973, Tolkien’s son Christopher published more myths, poetry, and background
information from Tolkien’s story world, notably in The Silmarilion.
 |
| Gandalf the Grey |
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
Although Tolkien had
already been working on some of the mythology of Arda and Middle-earth, that
day when he doodled the first words of The Hobbit marked the beginning of his great adventure of bringing his world to our world.
 |
| The Misty Mountains |
That simple declarative sentence
has led to a literary empire of books, movies, and mega-merchandizing. In 2009,
Forbes magazine ranked Tolkien as the fifth top-earning “dead celebrity” in the
world—a designation that would probably make the professor laugh and shake his
head. The Lord of the Rings is the second best-selling novel ever written, surpassed only by Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and The Hobbit ranks sixth on that awe-inspiring list.
But more
importantly, Tolkien gave the world one of the greatest literary works of the
twentieth century, sparking a great resurgence of interest in high fantasy.
And most important of all, Tolkien told a rip-roaring good story that still captures
our hearts. So butter the popcorn! I can’t wait to see Part 2 of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit—The Desolation
of Smaug. Yehaw!
