The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins by John D. Rateliff

The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins Reviews

• 
  Michael

  Mr. Baggins is a scholarly book and one more suited to the die-hard Tolkien enthusiast than the casual reader. That's not to say that it's dry or boring; quite the reverse, in fact.
  
  This is a book about a book, or more precisely a book about part of a book, as it covers about 2/3s of the action of The Hobbit. Rateliff has taken a number of fragments and drafts of The Hobbit and presents them to us with copious notes and commentaries. Although the main plot is essentially the same as Tolkien's published story, there were many differences in detail and it's fascinating to see how the accumulation of such modifications affected the work as a whole.
  
  The book is divided into the chapters of the published story that we're familiar with, although the draft version had no such divisions. Tolkien's text is annotated to highlight the variations. Each chapter is then followed by Rateliff's commentaries on what we've just read, providing fascinating insight into Tolkien's sources, inspirations and useful background information.
  
  Thus we learn about Tolkien's fascination with "eagles-to-the-rescue"; the development of elves from Norse and Celtic folklore, through the Middle-ages and into the late Victorian and Edwardian era; Tolkien's likely source for Beorn the werebear; neolithic lake towns, etc.
  
  That the commentaries are annotated, and frequently refer back to Tolkien's own invented mythology, makes the book wonderfully convoluted and recursive. And some nice illustrated plates are thrown in for good measure.
  
  Next time I read The Hobbit, it will certainly be with this book, and the companion volume,
  The History of the Hobbit, Volume 2, by my side.
• 
  Lisa

  The History of the Hobbit is a series similar to Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle-Earth, with Rateliff providing early manuscripts of the story, plot notes and his own commentaries, allowing fans to see how
  The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again was formed. While a few names differ from the published version, the story isn't so dissimilar from the published version we're used to. Indeed, the biggest change is probably the meeting between Gollum and Bilbo, which was only changed to the version everyone knows after Lord of the Rings was published. The plot notes, however, allow us a tantalising glimpse at different ideas Tolkien thought about including.
  
  The commentaries are – to me – more readable and interesting than those in History of Middle-Earth. They trace possible inspirations to related material, including historic texts, but also to Tolkien's own legendarium.
  
  On a shallow note, the presentation of the hardcover editions are absolutely beautiful.
  
• 
  Othy

  Somewhat disappointing, unfortunately, especially compared to Christopher Tolkien's "History of Middle Earth." Most of the comments by Rateliff (the author) concern guessing influences on Tolkien's imagination or nit-picking small textual changes. It was good to read some of Tolkien's ideas of where The Hobbit might have gone, but I've been getting the feeling lately that we're delving a bit too much into Tolkien's creative process. Don't get me wrong, I love the Histories of Middle Earth, but there's only so much you can hack apart the process of a writing. Noting that Fili instead of Kili said such-and-such really has very little point for anything.
• 
  Mitch Milam

  There is absolutely no way that 108,000 people have rated this thing on goodreads (especially when part 2 only has like 1,500 ratings). I'm assuming people got confused and mistook this for The Hobbit?
• 
  Alex

  I love Lord of the rings and I think this is a good precuel.
  
• 
  Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

  This being the first of two closely-linked volumes, I shall keep my comments to a minimum here, reserving them for a full review of the whole when I finish reading Part 2.
  
  Rateliff presents, with a fair plethora of apparatus (Introduction, text notes, chapter commentaries on divers topics, notes on the commentaries, appendices...), Tolkien's various drafts for _The Hobbit_, more or less chronologically as written. There are two of Tolkien's fairly typical false starts, followed by a long period of composition which takes us up to (and beyond) the end of this volume - the Lake-town episode.
  
  The only other comment I will offer here is that this is much less "heavy" reading than the _History of Middle-earth_ volumes.
• 
  Emy

  I found parts of this book good, but sometimes I didn't because it was written so long ago and it was written quite weird and old words. I took quite a while to read it because I wasn't really enjoying it too much and it was a relief to finish it. I really liked the movies though, so for me the movies were better
• 
  Jacqueline Lee

  The Hobbit was magical and exciting. I read this book in 6th grade which is very rare for me. I was not much of a reader and this book had me dreaming about The Middle Earth... I would even paint and draw pictures after each chapter which has lead me to LOVE the movies series of the Lord of the Rings which I have yet to read.
• 
  Emily

  This doesn't have the personal touch that the History of LOTR books did, but since the Hobbit was written when Tolkien's children were still small, there probably isn't a lot of personal insight they could have added to it anyway.
• 
  Aliona Shokurova

  My favourite childhood book. Thought I found a secret Treasure in the library shelfs. Mind blowing. Brought me into the land of fairies and dragons.
• 
  K v

  Loved it
• 
  Philip Chaston

  For fanatics like me.
• 
  J.W. Donley

  This thing is information overload!
• 
  Quenta De Vos

  Ik had één van de eerste drukken gelezen en deze stonden spijtig genoeg in een oud Nederlands geschreven, waardoor het soms moeilijk werd om te volgen. Uiteindelijk wel een mooi verhaal.
• 
  Elnora

  A well written book. Enjoyed reading it.