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: G
andalf 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 wh
ere
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 i
n 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 charact
ers.
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 g
ift 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, whe
re 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 ha
s 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
in
fluence 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 so
meone 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 t
he 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 19
66 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 - T
he 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. as always I want to say a huge thank you to
all my patreon and YouTube supporters who make this channel possible Tom de Bombadil
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orld traveler Matthew Jeffrey Viking Lord Leo vitori Sky carcass
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Debbie if you enjoyed the artwork in this video check out the artists in the description
to purchase prints of their great work for yourself thanks so much for watching and
we'll see you next time on nerd of the Rings
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