It has a real “where the wild things are” feel…which is the art used to decorate my local library.
A lot of people have chosen to take the Hobbit as seriously as its older brother—-including Peter Jackson—-and have missed out on the absurd, beautiful childishness of the whole thing.
The Hobbit does a wonderful job of introducing the ideas and characters of LotR in a way which is accessible for children and I think the art presented here is a valid artistic take on a children’s book about a dragon.
"absurd, beautiful childishness of the whole thing"
There is the bed-jumping scene, so there is childishness in the movies too. (I also hated that scene; I started to root for Sauron when I saw that scene.)
> I was under the impression that The Hobbit was the first book in this saga?
Yes: But the Hobbit is much shorter and is a much easier read. It also was edited after LOTR was published to fix some minor plot holes.
WRT the movies: Peter Jackson added a lot to the "Hobbit" trilogy that wasn't in the book, such as the whole story arc about Gandalf when he wasn't with the dwarves, or the other wizards. The book isn't the epic that the movie makes it out to be.
It’s as valid as any art. But as an illustrated book, it’s lacking.
If I had read this version as a kid, I’d be extremely confused as to why Gollum was 20 feet tall and wearing a flower crown. And then I’d be mad and consider it a bad illustration. (I’m aware some people think the original version didn’t specify his size. But the 1937 text states “Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature.”)
If there’s a character in a book who is known for wearing a red shirt, you might think it’s interesting to subvert expectations and give him a green shirt. But when the picture with the green shirt appears next to text describing a red shirt, it fails as an illustration. Especially in a book meant for children.
Tolkien and Jansson shared one thing: people did translations of their work which they totally hated
So it's sort-of funny that she wound up pissing him off with artwork which didn't fit his mental model, when they both experienced people trying to do the translation and failing to hit the mark.
(I think I read this of both of them, in respective biographies)
"I’m aware some people think the original version didn’t specify his size"
Well, he was a hobbit once, right? So a 10 meters tall Gollum makes less sense than a Gollum that has about the same size as other hobbits, give or take.
That's a retcon. There was no indication that he was a hobbit in The Hobbit (and as others have mentioned, in the original there was no physical description at all.)
This version says it’s the 1937 edition. It has the pre change story about Gollum offering the ring which Tolkien said is what he changed. But it also says he was a small slimy creature.
Yeah it's entirely possible the version that I have that is supposed to be from 1937 was tainted with later versions despite it not containing any of the more well known 1951 changes. That is maybe someone reconstructed it by taking a 1966 copy and undoing the changes, but forgot about the small slimy creature change.
But apparently there were dozens of different versions that actually ended up in print that had different amounts of the changes caused by some printers mixing old plates and new. So it's entirely possible that small slimy appeared in some versions around 1951 but not others and that's what that page is working off of.
(It's difficult to find an excellent authoritative link clearly explaining that the change was in the 1966 edition - there is 'The History of The Hobbit' by John D. Rateliff, but I can't find it online)
That’s not correct as far as I can tell. I found a 1937 version complete with the original “Gollum offers to give him the ring” and small slimy creature was there.
> If there’s a character in a book who is known for wearing a red shirt, you might think it’s interesting to subvert expectations and give him a green shirt. But when the picture with the green shirt appears next to text describing a red shirt, it fails as an illustration. Especially in a book meant for children.
> (I’m aware some people think the original version didn’t specify his size. But the 1937 text states “Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature.”)
This directly contradicts the article. I found the first edition online, and have determined you are mistaken.
Also (referencing a side comment) the only mention of the size of Gollum's boat in that PDF (and it may not even be his boat - I'm not an expert on the source material, just going off mentions of "boat" near "Gollum") seems to be "little black boat" but that's pretty quickly followed by it fitting 4 people at a time which isn't all that "little", really, and I think the large Gollum in the illustration could fit in a 4 person boat (albeit in a perhaps top-heavy fashion.)
It’s not a primary source is a scan of a 2016 reprint that I can’t find much information on. And I she a version that purports to be the 1937 edition which does have the small slimy creature line.
The version you linked is a 2016 reprint, so I’m actually not sure which one is correct.
The version I linked to still has Gollum offering to give Bilbo the ring so it certainly predates the modern version I have. And that is the change Tolkien explicitly states he made.
The version I linked has this "If it asks us,
and we doesn't answer, we gives it a present, gollum!" Which I'm positive is only in the 1937 version. From what I can tell there were also minor corrections made before the 1951 changes, so I suppose it's possible that adding small slimy creature was one of those.
There are also reported to be dozens of different versions after 1951 caused by printers mixing and matching old and revised plates. I'm unsure exactly how that 1937 facsimile was recreated, or how the version I linked was created. One or both could have been taken from this mismatched versions.
I think the only way to be sure would be to buy a reprint from before 1951 or to find a scan of one online.
I see. This is a weird situation, then, and I apologize if I was abrasive.
Searching online ("Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum. I don't know") there are many hits for the line without "small and slimy creature." I assume it to be part of some legitimate edition, and I find it hard to believe this clarification would have been removed between editions, so with some confidence I conclude the original version did not have "small and slimy creature." Still, I understand your POV and appreciate your patience explaining it.
No worries. I wasn’t offended. Just surprised because I knew I had double checked.
Oh yeah I think it’s likely the very first version didn’t have it. But I’m much less sure about when it could have first popped up. I think it’s highly likely it showed up before the Swedish version. But I’m not very confident. Also it’s possible that the version Jansson was working from didn’t have it, even if a version of it with that text existed at the time.
The comment it's replying to stated that 1937 quote as if they had checked it. That deception seems ruder to me the language in the comment you're talking about. But I do agree the last sentence could've been omitted while getting the core point across (but we're all only human).
Agree that the post comes across as rude in tone, but it’s never explicitly disparaging. Might just be an overly direct tone (non-native English speaker, or maybe on the spectrum?)
Nah just sounds like people can't handle what they say being questioned as per usual. We should never take offense to being asked to clarify or explain when someone thinks we're wrong.
I'd only be vaguely offended if they had no grounded reason to think that I'm wrong (and they'd be calling me out for the sake of calling me out).
Communicating ideas is a part of tribalism too. Good brain chemicals when the tribe agrees and bad brain chemicals when they disagree.
I... actually really liked these. And yes, sure, they aren't completely obedient to Tolkien's descriptions of the characters, but the atmosphere feels right.
It feels like a Nordic interpretation of a folk tale shared across Europe, meaning it has small differences and a local flavor. Which seems very appropriate for what Tolkien was trying to do in the first place.
I acquired a taste for Moomins rather late in life due to a chance encounter with Mika Pohjola who was performing Moominröster.
Collected the newspaper strips and some novels.
It was all very incongruous and absurd… but then so are salt licorice, pickled herring, and many other Scandinavian things that aren’t to everyone’s taste.
I found the Tolkien Calendar edition which used Jansson’s art. I find it adorable. No one else does.
The Hobbit is also a whimsical children's book, and doesn't have anything to do with saving the world (a world that Tolkien had not developed anywhere near the state in we see in LoTR when he wrote The Hobbit almost 20 years earlier).
The world was pretty well developed, but The Hobbit isn't really set in it. The Hobbit was retconned into his broader Middle-earth as the sequel grew in the telling. He'd been re-writing the material that became The Silmarillion for decades. (And he offered it to the publisher instead of a Hobbit sequel, and they said "what else ya got?)
This despite the fact that some names and elements were re-used. He often cycled the same names around until he found where they fit. Which also makes reading early drafts of the Hobbit fun when Thorin was named Gandalf.
Was its license rescinded by the International Society of Children's Books? Thanks for letting me know, I'll be sure to tell my child to stop enjoying it.
I read it to my daughter when she was six, and she loved it. We did one chapter a night. I did almost no editing as I read.
By the time we read LOTR she was eight, and we never did finish ROTK because the Frodo and Sam parts really do drag on (I get that he wrote them this way so that the reader would get a sense of just how arduous the journey was, but...)
Somewhat whimsical, yet somewhat grappling with dark undertones, possibly due to the trauma of the war.
The moomins starts with a great flood that washes them all away to live in a new place (I think this is a parallel to the Finns moving out of Karelia after the war. I believe this was the largest migration of people that had occured at the time, and it has been described as causing generational trauma to the Finnish).
In addition I believe MoominPappa deals with issues of depression or something?
Fantastic creatures diving to retrieve their pantry supplies or the head of a family grappling with a mild midlife crisis is not exactly on the same scale with a band of warriors reclaiming their homeland and in passing dealing with the eternal evil.
I love that you use "fantastic creatures" to describe the world of Jansson, but "warriors" to describe Tolkien. Last time I checked, it had hobbits, dwarves, elves, talking trees... but none of that fantasy nonsense of Moomintrolls, right?
There are some seriously dark themes in there - and unlike in Tolkien, the protagonists are completely helpless when facing them. No epic battle in which magical eagles and a magical bear show up to save the day.
Just for the record, I don't at all think they're similar. I just don't think it's correct to call the moomins entirely whimsical (though they are a bit I guess.)
Mostly just trying to contextualise the moomins with some info I found interesting and unexpected given that it looks like a children's show about anthropomorphic hippos.
There is an enormous difference in tone if you actually read any of Tove Janssons books. The animated moomin series is childish and cute. The world of the books is dark and scary and contains monsters and threats that are almost lovecraftian. The moomin trolls are victims to their surroundings and the forces of nature...
(And even the books, floods and comets, children's books about impending natural disasters, not of the magical kind that you know aren't real anyway, but of the kind that have actually destroyed life on earth before and might happen again, that's real nightmare fuel for active children's imaginations.)
At least one of the adaptations as of the 1980's also had moments that were very much dark and scary as a child. I haven't read or seen anything of the Moomins since, but I think the Groke might have been one of the things that freaked me out.
One of the books you mention is about an adventure involving a treasure. The other book is about catastrophic flooding in the first book and a comet that threatens the planet in the second, if I recall correctly. Which one did you think was about saving the world and which one was about whimsical non-issues again?
Of course, you don't have to like the books. They are both children's books. But of all the possible critique this one was particularly strange.
It is fantastically bleak, with the sea drying up, and that doomsday prophet reminding them that everything will be destroyed. Then the comet somehow misses, which they react to with a sort of dreamy, "oh. Right." and even the cake moominmom bakes to celebrate that they're not all dead after all, gets ruined because that damn doomsday prophet sits on it.
I'm a fan of Tolkien's art and have a couple of prints on my wall, The Hill and The Tree of Amalion. They have been up for years now and I haven't gotten a bit tired of them. They convey Tolkien's voice to me almost as effectively as his books. He didn't need an illustrator.
Those are wonderful! It's really interesting to see Jansson's take on the characters and settings. When I read _The Hobbit_ in the early 1970s, there was already a well established tradition of how to portray Tolkien's world. Jansson's seems very fresh to me.
Also of interest, and probably just as upsetting to some, is Gene Deitch's version of _The Hobbit_ which was made in the mid 1960s in an attempt to retain the movie rights. Made in 30 days!
The Hobbit is today usually viewed through the lens of The Lord of the Rings, and The Lord of the Rings is viewed with the baggage of 70 years of post-Tolkien epic fantasy culture.
Being deeply embedded in that culture myself, I must admit that these illustrations don’t appeal to me at all, and don’t match my mental imagery of the story. But I can see how they might have looked like a perfect fit to someone who read The Hobbit with a fresh eye when it was still fresh. I wish I could have read it like that.
I inhaled Lord of the Rings on first reading. I lived inside it. And it had no illustrations except maps, right? But later when the movies came out they were a big disappointment for ne, they were not the world I had visited. And they were boring. Had I not read the books before, they might have been just fine.
Yeah, the (Peter Jackson) movies were basically LotR seen through the lens of decades of D&D and Warhammer Fantasy, a peculiar aesthetic which of course grew off LotR itself.
I'm guessing that Tolkien would have deeply hated it all with a burning passion.
It's quite alright. Done in a classic childrens' story illustration style, rather than the modern sleek style of CGI-heavy fantasy. Tastes may have changed a bit in the last 60 years or so.
> As presented, Gollum is badly off, I reckon - missing the books textual description. The flowers are out of line.
This is addressed in the article. "Paul Gravett writes in his new book about Tove Jansson: ‘Her Gollum towered monstrously large, to the surprise of Tolkien himself, who realized that he had never clarified Gollum’s size and so amended the second edition to describe him as ‘a small, slimy creature’."
We have Jansson to thank for the clarification, it seems!
Tolkien made significant changes to the Gollum chapter. In the first edition Gollum gives up the ring willingly. The ring was not yet the Ring, and Gollum was not yet a Hobbit.
The man took retcons as an intellectual challenge. Sometimes the retcon itself spun off a whole new story. But it makes The Hobbit really incompatible with its own sequel, even after his changes. (You have to read it as having a very unreliable narrator.)
> Now it is a curious fact that this is not the story as Bilbo first told it to his companions. To them his account was that Gollum had promised to give him a present, if he won the game; but when Gollum went to fetch it from his island he found the treasure was gone: a magic ring, which had been given to him long ago on his birthday. Bilbo guessed that this was the very ring that he had found, and as he had won the game, it was already his by right. But being in a tight place, he said nothing about it, and made Gollum show him the way out, as a reward instead of a present. This account Bilbo set down in his memoirs, and he seems never to have altered it himself, not even after the Council of Elrond. Evidently it still appeared in the original Red Book, as it did in several of the copies and abstracts. But many copies contain the true account (as an alternative), derived no doubt from notes by Frodo or Samwise, both of whom learned the truth, though they seem to have been unwilling to delete anything actually written by the old hobbit himself.
Indeed: the intro to The Lord of the Rings explains that previous editions of The Hobbit, where the ring was a gift rather, were Bilbo's original lie to cover up the theft. Perhaps that was all the influence of the Ring itself.
That's how I've always imagined it - The Hobbit as published is the story told as if intended for children (hobbit or otherwise), but the 'actual' in-universe events were just as dark and realistic as the tone of The Lord of the Rings.
Clarifying question -- what do you mean Gollum was not yet a Hobbit? I don't think he ever was - but a river folk before the ring deprived him wasn't he? I never read first edition so I suspect there are some differences as you allude. (ring not being the ring).
Actually - in the creative process did he kick off the Hobbit then expand into the world building as an after thought and turn the one ring into this wild expansive creative endeavor? I always assumed it had been pre-built in his mind then spilled out in ink (As a sequence of events).
In the original version, there is minimal physical description of Gollum (it was dark after all) and the ring was simply a magic ring that granted invisibility. Gollum lost it and IIRC he just let Bilbo go. They whole idea of him being some hobbit-like creature corrupted by the One Ring was not present at all. It was one of a series of fairy-tale adventures no more important than the trolls turning to stone. Bilbo needed a way to sneak around Smaug, so he found a magic ring.
It's doubtless still possible to find that version, I read it in an old country library that had it on the shelf since the 1950s.
> There are of course other very minor changes. For instance, Gandalf tells Bilbo to bring out the chicken and tomatoes in the unrevised edition vs. the chicken and pickles in the revised edition. But I'll skip over these inconsequential changes.
Bit of medievalism there (tomatoes being a Colombian Exchange thing).
He knew about the umbrella and kept it in. It’s more likely Tolkien was concerned with the date and whether fresh tomatoes would be available than medievalism.
There's something so fundamentally European about potatoes, despite being (comparatively) new there. And British in particular. They're stodgy, bland, filling, comforting, and really tasty in a dull way. They displaced things like turnips, which had too much flavor and a dispiriting watery texture.
He could so easily have written that passage for turnips, but it would have been less comforting. (It is often read as if the word "potato" was used to translate some extinct native-European root vegetable, but I find that doubtful.)
Thanks - sounds like it was some reworking after building out the original story line to make the rest of it work. I enjoy the storyline that doesn't have to be tied into the main arc (ie trolls or fairy-tale adventure component).
Funny that the first Swedish translation, from 1947, also had an illustration of a huge Gollum, and Tolkien already commented on that long before Tove Jansson's did her version.
> The translation of the name 'Hobbit' to 'Hompe' was not the only thing that annoyed Tolkien about this edition. Already in 1948, he wrote to Rosemary, a young fan, that "the picture of Gollum in the Swedish edition of The Hobbit makes him look huge."
These are lovely. I knew about the Moomins of course but I didn't know about the other stuff she did, some of which I really like. I wish the website had more of the illustrations but I guess there might be copyright issues.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing more of her illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark (the latter is a great poem if you haven't read it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29888/29888-h/29888-h.htm)
I've been thinking about that illustration of Smaug for nearly 40 years and I never knew where it came from (I didn't recall it was from a Tolkien-related thing, but I remember it vividly otherwise)! I must have seen it at a friend's or the library since as far as I know we never had these at home.
I believe Tove Jansson also painted the color cover for the first authorized American edition of Fellowship of the Ring (1965). In _Letters_ one can read Tolkien’s reaction. He was quite taken aback, calling out the Emus (!) in the foreground. As if “ the illustrator hadn’t read my book.”
The 1973 Ballantine editions carried only Tolkien’s own paintings on the covers and slipcase.
I only learned of her involvement after becoming a huge Jansson fan. I had to take another look at the Emu.
It seems those were drawn by Barbara Remington [1] who didn't have time to read the books before making her illustrations. Apparently, the Lord of the Rings was in public domain in the US for a short while, so the publisher (and Tolkien) had to rush for a new 'authorized' version.
I love these illustrations! It’s always hard for me not to automatically conjure pictures from the Ralph Bakshi animated film when I think about The Hobbit, these give me another very cool perspective.
As someone who loved the Moomintroll illustrations I find this both familiar and hilarious. I suppose I might have a different opinion if I'd actually read any of Tolkien's works.
> "She even made some of the characters especially tiny to elevate the landscapes." wish there were more examples of this in the images shown in the article.
Jansson’s illustrations were reused in one of the annual Tolkien calendars. I kept it on my wall for years, changing the month every so often. So… 13 illustrations reprinted
We're these only used in Sweden? I know I've seen some of them before, but I'm not sure if it's from decades on the internet or my school having a specific thirty year old edition of The Hobbit.
I seem to recall thinking Gollum was big, but honestly could be remembering the Shelov scene. It was long time ago.
This was my first literary experience, my mother read it to me when I was three years old. Seeing Janssons rendering of Smaug made me remember it was this version she read for me.
Well ... it looks more like a midget-man than a hobbit. But what exactly is a hobbit? In the movie "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" from 2001, the hobbits shown pissed me off. When they started to jump on the bed, I started to root for Sauron. It got much better in the movie "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" from 2012 but even then they look mostly just like midget humans, with a bit of an elfish touch (and I hated the elves in the movie from 2001; the depiction was just lame). The only hobbit-like entity I liked was Gollum.
So how does a hobbit really look like? "Tolkien presented hobbits as a variety of humanity, or close relatives thereof".
So based on this, while Tove's pictures look more like a parody, I don't really see it as intrinsically wrong. It's just less of a "standard" depiction - Tolkien could have assumed hobbits to be anything but midget-humans, but they are mostly midgets with stronger feet.
First of, the illustrations are great. I love them.
Separate though, if they don't represent the original material then why not just make some new IP instead if effectively taking a piss on someone else's?
The "original material" was modified significantly - Tove's illustration of Gollum, e.g., was not inconsistent with the 1937 edition she was working from, before Tolkien rewrote the scene to bring it more in-line with the version of the character from the Lord of the Rings in the second edition.
They do represent the original material, as interpreted by the illustrator. And Tove was hardly pissing on anything - she was commissioned to illustrate a version of the book by the publisher.
That she got permission's got nothing to do with it. Abrams got permission to turn Star Wars into a Lord of the Rings fetch quests for the secret talisman. That doesn't mean he didn't piss all over "Star Wars".
I don't think it's pissing on the source material, it's adapting it.
Alastair Reynolds once expressed this sentiment in a nice way:
I didn’t want to be slavishly bound by the earlier story. So I made the decision that House of Suns would take its cue from the events and characters in the shorter piece, but it wouldn’t be afraid to contradict them if that made for a better story.
"Snuffkin (Snusmumriken) and the ring", that's what I see. Or Mummy troll. I saw some cartoon adaptations of the LotR, never liked it much because of the dead seriousness, but this makes it carelessness, which probably could have made me read it.
Very typical arrogance of the so-called modern "artist" mind - "it was an adventure for me", getting an assignment to complement a great work of art and making it about herself.
The problem with these modern artists is they're not working hard to improve a skill, but rather keep doing more of what comes easy hoping the world maybe recognizes their "natural genius" ... as a result they go hard on pushing that one thing unique to them (whatever it is, scriblles, splashes, infantile characters) ...
And yeah let's not forget the "you just don't understand modern art" shaming.
It has a real “where the wild things are” feel…which is the art used to decorate my local library.
A lot of people have chosen to take the Hobbit as seriously as its older brother—-including Peter Jackson—-and have missed out on the absurd, beautiful childishness of the whole thing.
The Hobbit does a wonderful job of introducing the ideas and characters of LotR in a way which is accessible for children and I think the art presented here is a valid artistic take on a children’s book about a dragon.
"absurd, beautiful childishness of the whole thing"
There is the bed-jumping scene, so there is childishness in the movies too. (I also hated that scene; I started to root for Sauron when I saw that scene.)
Apropos rooting for Sauron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
> A lot of people have chosen to take the Hobbit as seriously as its older brother
Do you refer to the LOTR trilogy as The Hobbit's older brother here? I was under the impression that The Hobbit was the first book in this saga?
> I was under the impression that The Hobbit was the first book in this saga?
Yes: But the Hobbit is much shorter and is a much easier read. It also was edited after LOTR was published to fix some minor plot holes.
WRT the movies: Peter Jackson added a lot to the "Hobbit" trilogy that wasn't in the book, such as the whole story arc about Gandalf when he wasn't with the dwarves, or the other wizards. The book isn't the epic that the movie makes it out to be.
Obviously true, but LOTR is also obviously more mature than The Hobbit, which I think was OP's point.
It’s as valid as any art. But as an illustrated book, it’s lacking.
If I had read this version as a kid, I’d be extremely confused as to why Gollum was 20 feet tall and wearing a flower crown. And then I’d be mad and consider it a bad illustration. (I’m aware some people think the original version didn’t specify his size. But the 1937 text states “Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature.”)
If there’s a character in a book who is known for wearing a red shirt, you might think it’s interesting to subvert expectations and give him a green shirt. But when the picture with the green shirt appears next to text describing a red shirt, it fails as an illustration. Especially in a book meant for children.
Tolkien and Jansson shared one thing: people did translations of their work which they totally hated
So it's sort-of funny that she wound up pissing him off with artwork which didn't fit his mental model, when they both experienced people trying to do the translation and failing to hit the mark.
(I think I read this of both of them, in respective biographies)
"I’m aware some people think the original version didn’t specify his size"
Well, he was a hobbit once, right? So a 10 meters tall Gollum makes less sense than a Gollum that has about the same size as other hobbits, give or take.
But that's only known if you read other material, it's not in The Hobbit.
That's a retcon. There was no indication that he was a hobbit in The Hobbit (and as others have mentioned, in the original there was no physical description at all.)
https://www.theonering.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-Ho...
This version says it’s the 1937 edition. It has the pre change story about Gollum offering the ring which Tolkien said is what he changed. But it also says he was a small slimy creature.
Neither the "before" nor "after" here have "small slimy"
https://www.ringgame.net/riddles.html
Yeah it's entirely possible the version that I have that is supposed to be from 1937 was tainted with later versions despite it not containing any of the more well known 1951 changes. That is maybe someone reconstructed it by taking a 1966 copy and undoing the changes, but forgot about the small slimy creature change.
But apparently there were dozens of different versions that actually ended up in print that had different amounts of the changes caused by some printers mixing old plates and new. So it's entirely possible that small slimy appeared in some versions around 1951 but not others and that's what that page is working off of.
"a small slimy creature" was added after this picture was drawn, in the 1966 edition.
Other languages adaptions had larger gollum's also - see some at e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/vy7vij/before_the_196...
(It's difficult to find an excellent authoritative link clearly explaining that the change was in the 1966 edition - there is 'The History of The Hobbit' by John D. Rateliff, but I can't find it online)
That’s not correct as far as I can tell. I found a 1937 version complete with the original “Gollum offers to give him the ring” and small slimy creature was there.
https://www.theonering.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-Ho...
> If there’s a character in a book who is known for wearing a red shirt, you might think it’s interesting to subvert expectations and give him a green shirt. But when the picture with the green shirt appears next to text describing a red shirt, it fails as an illustration. Especially in a book meant for children.
Should Aragorn wear pants in the illustrations?
Aragorn isn't in The Hobbit.
> (I’m aware some people think the original version didn’t specify his size. But the 1937 text states “Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature.”)
This directly contradicts the article. I found the first edition online, and have determined you are mistaken.
http://searcherr.work/The%20Hobbit%201st%20ed%20(1937).pdf
Page 83: "Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was."
Mind explaining the source of your mistake?
Also (referencing a side comment) the only mention of the size of Gollum's boat in that PDF (and it may not even be his boat - I'm not an expert on the source material, just going off mentions of "boat" near "Gollum") seems to be "little black boat" but that's pretty quickly followed by it fitting 4 people at a time which isn't all that "little", really, and I think the large Gollum in the illustration could fit in a 4 person boat (albeit in a perhaps top-heavy fashion.)
Hats off for going to the Primary Source!
It’s not a primary source is a scan of a 2016 reprint that I can’t find much information on. And I she a version that purports to be the 1937 edition which does have the small slimy creature line.
https://www.theonering.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-Ho...
That version has the original “Gollum offers to give him the ring if he wins”.
https://www.theonering.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-Ho...
The version you linked is a 2016 reprint, so I’m actually not sure which one is correct.
The version I linked to still has Gollum offering to give Bilbo the ring so it certainly predates the modern version I have. And that is the change Tolkien explicitly states he made.
The version I linked has this "If it asks us, and we doesn't answer, we gives it a present, gollum!" Which I'm positive is only in the 1937 version. From what I can tell there were also minor corrections made before the 1951 changes, so I suppose it's possible that adding small slimy creature was one of those.
There are also reported to be dozens of different versions after 1951 caused by printers mixing and matching old and revised plates. I'm unsure exactly how that 1937 facsimile was recreated, or how the version I linked was created. One or both could have been taken from this mismatched versions.
I think the only way to be sure would be to buy a reprint from before 1951 or to find a scan of one online.
I see. This is a weird situation, then, and I apologize if I was abrasive.
Searching online ("Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum. I don't know") there are many hits for the line without "small and slimy creature." I assume it to be part of some legitimate edition, and I find it hard to believe this clarification would have been removed between editions, so with some confidence I conclude the original version did not have "small and slimy creature." Still, I understand your POV and appreciate your patience explaining it.
No worries. I wasn’t offended. Just surprised because I knew I had double checked.
Oh yeah I think it’s likely the very first version didn’t have it. But I’m much less sure about when it could have first popped up. I think it’s highly likely it showed up before the Swedish version. But I’m not very confident. Also it’s possible that the version Jansson was working from didn’t have it, even if a version of it with that text existed at the time.
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Why rude?
The comment it's replying to stated that 1937 quote as if they had checked it. That deception seems ruder to me the language in the comment you're talking about. But I do agree the last sentence could've been omitted while getting the core point across (but we're all only human).
https://www.theonering.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-Ho...
I did.
The version you posted is a 2016 reprint, I’m unsure which is correct.
Fair enough! (BTW I didn't post any version but your point stands.)
Also worth pointing out that I didn’t find the original correction rude unless there was an earlier version of the comment I didn’t see ;)
Not rude, just direct.
Nope, it’s rude and abrasive
Agree that the post comes across as rude in tone, but it’s never explicitly disparaging. Might just be an overly direct tone (non-native English speaker, or maybe on the spectrum?)
Nah just sounds like people can't handle what they say being questioned as per usual. We should never take offense to being asked to clarify or explain when someone thinks we're wrong.
I'd only be vaguely offended if they had no grounded reason to think that I'm wrong (and they'd be calling me out for the sake of calling me out).
Communicating ideas is a part of tribalism too. Good brain chemicals when the tribe agrees and bad brain chemicals when they disagree.
Yeah, my bad, after re-reading the original post. It was not particularly rude.
Apologies.
I... actually really liked these. And yes, sure, they aren't completely obedient to Tolkien's descriptions of the characters, but the atmosphere feels right.
But then again, I grew up with the Moomins.
It feels like a Nordic interpretation of a folk tale shared across Europe, meaning it has small differences and a local flavor. Which seems very appropriate for what Tolkien was trying to do in the first place.
I acquired a taste for Moomins rather late in life due to a chance encounter with Mika Pohjola who was performing Moominröster.
Collected the newspaper strips and some novels.
It was all very incongruous and absurd… but then so are salt licorice, pickled herring, and many other Scandinavian things that aren’t to everyone’s taste.
I found the Tolkien Calendar edition which used Jansson’s art. I find it adorable. No one else does.
Moomins don't depict anything like saving the world, it's a whimsical universe dealing with whimsical non-issues.
I can see why Tolkien lovers are upset at these even though I'm not really one of them.
The Hobbit is also a whimsical children's book, and doesn't have anything to do with saving the world (a world that Tolkien had not developed anywhere near the state in we see in LoTR when he wrote The Hobbit almost 20 years earlier).
The world was pretty well developed, but The Hobbit isn't really set in it. The Hobbit was retconned into his broader Middle-earth as the sequel grew in the telling. He'd been re-writing the material that became The Silmarillion for decades. (And he offered it to the publisher instead of a Hobbit sequel, and they said "what else ya got?)
This despite the fact that some names and elements were re-used. He often cycled the same names around until he found where they fit. Which also makes reading early drafts of the Hobbit fun when Thorin was named Gandalf.
And like all good books for children, it contains many things that can inform your character for life.
It was a children's book and probably isn't anymore.
Was its license rescinded by the International Society of Children's Books? Thanks for letting me know, I'll be sure to tell my child to stop enjoying it.
I read it to my daughter when she was six, and she loved it. We did one chapter a night. I did almost no editing as I read.
By the time we read LOTR she was eight, and we never did finish ROTK because the Frodo and Sam parts really do drag on (I get that he wrote them this way so that the reader would get a sense of just how arduous the journey was, but...)
Rest assured, I can personally confirm that it is still a wonderful children's book.
How could that status ever chance? Being widely read by adults doesn't change if its an children's book or not.
Theoretically it could change via literacy rates and attention spans going down?
No it couldn't.
Somewhat whimsical, yet somewhat grappling with dark undertones, possibly due to the trauma of the war.
The moomins starts with a great flood that washes them all away to live in a new place (I think this is a parallel to the Finns moving out of Karelia after the war. I believe this was the largest migration of people that had occured at the time, and it has been described as causing generational trauma to the Finnish).
In addition I believe MoominPappa deals with issues of depression or something?
Fantastic creatures diving to retrieve their pantry supplies or the head of a family grappling with a mild midlife crisis is not exactly on the same scale with a band of warriors reclaiming their homeland and in passing dealing with the eternal evil.
I love that you use "fantastic creatures" to describe the world of Jansson, but "warriors" to describe Tolkien. Last time I checked, it had hobbits, dwarves, elves, talking trees... but none of that fantasy nonsense of Moomintrolls, right?
There are some seriously dark themes in there - and unlike in Tolkien, the protagonists are completely helpless when facing them. No epic battle in which magical eagles and a magical bear show up to save the day.
Just for the record, I don't at all think they're similar. I just don't think it's correct to call the moomins entirely whimsical (though they are a bit I guess.)
Mostly just trying to contextualise the moomins with some info I found interesting and unexpected given that it looks like a children's show about anthropomorphic hippos.
There is an enormous difference in tone if you actually read any of Tove Janssons books. The animated moomin series is childish and cute. The world of the books is dark and scary and contains monsters and threats that are almost lovecraftian. The moomin trolls are victims to their surroundings and the forces of nature...
Some of the animated adaptations were freakier than others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVQlJDtzUbo
(And even the books, floods and comets, children's books about impending natural disasters, not of the magical kind that you know aren't real anyway, but of the kind that have actually destroyed life on earth before and might happen again, that's real nightmare fuel for active children's imaginations.)
At least one of the adaptations as of the 1980's also had moments that were very much dark and scary as a child. I haven't read or seen anything of the Moomins since, but I think the Groke might have been one of the things that freaked me out.
Are you sure you haven't confused these books?
One of the books you mention is about an adventure involving a treasure. The other book is about catastrophic flooding in the first book and a comet that threatens the planet in the second, if I recall correctly. Which one did you think was about saving the world and which one was about whimsical non-issues again?
Of course, you don't have to like the books. They are both children's books. But of all the possible critique this one was particularly strange.
Comet in moominland is about them learning about a comet heading towards earth that they believe is going to kill them all.
It is fantastically bleak, with the sea drying up, and that doomsday prophet reminding them that everything will be destroyed. Then the comet somehow misses, which they react to with a sort of dreamy, "oh. Right." and even the cake moominmom bakes to celebrate that they're not all dead after all, gets ruined because that damn doomsday prophet sits on it.
Damn. Don’t look up, Moomins!
It wouldn’t be “Tolkien lovers” who are upset at these, it would be people too narcissistically self-involved with their own preconceptions.
I'm a fan of Tolkien's art and have a couple of prints on my wall, The Hill and The Tree of Amalion. They have been up for years now and I haven't gotten a bit tired of them. They convey Tolkien's voice to me almost as effectively as his books. He didn't need an illustrator.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/jrr-tolkiens-estat...
https://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/2/20/J.R.R._Tolkien_-_Th...
Those are wonderful! It's really interesting to see Jansson's take on the characters and settings. When I read _The Hobbit_ in the early 1970s, there was already a well established tradition of how to portray Tolkien's world. Jansson's seems very fresh to me.
Also of interest, and probably just as upsetting to some, is Gene Deitch's version of _The Hobbit_ which was made in the mid 1960s in an attempt to retain the movie rights. Made in 30 days!
https://youtu.be/UBnVL1Y2src?si=rpd-dOk-t4BYFP_Q
The Hobbit is today usually viewed through the lens of The Lord of the Rings, and The Lord of the Rings is viewed with the baggage of 70 years of post-Tolkien epic fantasy culture.
Being deeply embedded in that culture myself, I must admit that these illustrations don’t appeal to me at all, and don’t match my mental imagery of the story. But I can see how they might have looked like a perfect fit to someone who read The Hobbit with a fresh eye when it was still fresh. I wish I could have read it like that.
I inhaled Lord of the Rings on first reading. I lived inside it. And it had no illustrations except maps, right? But later when the movies came out they were a big disappointment for ne, they were not the world I had visited. And they were boring. Had I not read the books before, they might have been just fine.
Yeah, the (Peter Jackson) movies were basically LotR seen through the lens of decades of D&D and Warhammer Fantasy, a peculiar aesthetic which of course grew off LotR itself.
I'm guessing that Tolkien would have deeply hated it all with a burning passion.
Ugh. That video should have come with a flashing [INFORMATIONAL HAZARD] warning sign.
Tolkien fans, beware. This may ruin your day.
It's quite alright. Done in a classic childrens' story illustration style, rather than the modern sleek style of CGI-heavy fantasy. Tastes may have changed a bit in the last 60 years or so.
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lolz. I am so glad you told me why it was made. Otherwise it would be completely unforgivable.
I'd have to see more to have a final thought.
As presented, Gollum is badly off, I reckon - missing the books textual description. The flowers are out of line.
The dragon scene is wonderful and captures the situation.
The dwarves are a bit dopy looking but I think could cohere with the early introduction in the Hobbit.
> As presented, Gollum is badly off, I reckon - missing the books textual description. The flowers are out of line.
This is addressed in the article. "Paul Gravett writes in his new book about Tove Jansson: ‘Her Gollum towered monstrously large, to the surprise of Tolkien himself, who realized that he had never clarified Gollum’s size and so amended the second edition to describe him as ‘a small, slimy creature’."
We have Jansson to thank for the clarification, it seems!
Tolkien made significant changes to the Gollum chapter. In the first edition Gollum gives up the ring willingly. The ring was not yet the Ring, and Gollum was not yet a Hobbit.
The man took retcons as an intellectual challenge. Sometimes the retcon itself spun off a whole new story. But it makes The Hobbit really incompatible with its own sequel, even after his changes. (You have to read it as having a very unreliable narrator.)
From the prologue of The Lord of the Rings:
> Now it is a curious fact that this is not the story as Bilbo first told it to his companions. To them his account was that Gollum had promised to give him a present, if he won the game; but when Gollum went to fetch it from his island he found the treasure was gone: a magic ring, which had been given to him long ago on his birthday. Bilbo guessed that this was the very ring that he had found, and as he had won the game, it was already his by right. But being in a tight place, he said nothing about it, and made Gollum show him the way out, as a reward instead of a present. This account Bilbo set down in his memoirs, and he seems never to have altered it himself, not even after the Council of Elrond. Evidently it still appeared in the original Red Book, as it did in several of the copies and abstracts. But many copies contain the true account (as an alternative), derived no doubt from notes by Frodo or Samwise, both of whom learned the truth, though they seem to have been unwilling to delete anything actually written by the old hobbit himself.
> You have to read it as having a very unreliable narrator.
Perhaps even Bilbo himself. :) One can imagine him telling a heavily fictionalized version of his adventures to some impressionable young hobbits.
Indeed: the intro to The Lord of the Rings explains that previous editions of The Hobbit, where the ring was a gift rather, were Bilbo's original lie to cover up the theft. Perhaps that was all the influence of the Ring itself.
That's how I've always imagined it - The Hobbit as published is the story told as if intended for children (hobbit or otherwise), but the 'actual' in-universe events were just as dark and realistic as the tone of The Lord of the Rings.
He did try to rewrite The Hobbit in the literary style of LotR, but it just didn't work and he abandoned it after a few chapters.
Clarifying question -- what do you mean Gollum was not yet a Hobbit? I don't think he ever was - but a river folk before the ring deprived him wasn't he? I never read first edition so I suspect there are some differences as you allude. (ring not being the ring).
Actually - in the creative process did he kick off the Hobbit then expand into the world building as an after thought and turn the one ring into this wild expansive creative endeavor? I always assumed it had been pre-built in his mind then spilled out in ink (As a sequence of events).
In the original version, there is minimal physical description of Gollum (it was dark after all) and the ring was simply a magic ring that granted invisibility. Gollum lost it and IIRC he just let Bilbo go. They whole idea of him being some hobbit-like creature corrupted by the One Ring was not present at all. It was one of a series of fairy-tale adventures no more important than the trolls turning to stone. Bilbo needed a way to sneak around Smaug, so he found a magic ring.
It's doubtless still possible to find that version, I read it in an old country library that had it on the shelf since the 1950s.
https://www.ttrpbc.com/discussion/532/the-hobbit-first-vs-se... has the changes.
This is fun.
> There are of course other very minor changes. For instance, Gandalf tells Bilbo to bring out the chicken and tomatoes in the unrevised edition vs. the chicken and pickles in the revised edition. But I'll skip over these inconsequential changes.
Bit of medievalism there (tomatoes being a Colombian Exchange thing).
He knew about the umbrella and kept it in. It’s more likely Tolkien was concerned with the date and whether fresh tomatoes would be available than medievalism.
And yet he went on to include potatoes in LotR.
There's something so fundamentally European about potatoes, despite being (comparatively) new there. And British in particular. They're stodgy, bland, filling, comforting, and really tasty in a dull way. They displaced things like turnips, which had too much flavor and a dispiriting watery texture.
He could so easily have written that passage for turnips, but it would have been less comforting. (It is often read as if the word "potato" was used to translate some extinct native-European root vegetable, but I find that doubtful.)
Thanks - sounds like it was some reworking after building out the original story line to make the rest of it work. I enjoy the storyline that doesn't have to be tied into the main arc (ie trolls or fairy-tale adventure component).
Gollum was retconned to be a hobbit after the illustrations were done.
Gollum was a river hobbit corrupted by the ring
As I understand it he planned to do more retcons but the publisher just sort of ran with the example he sent them.
Funny that the first Swedish translation, from 1947, also had an illustration of a huge Gollum, and Tolkien already commented on that long before Tove Jansson's did her version.
> The translation of the name 'Hobbit' to 'Hompe' was not the only thing that annoyed Tolkien about this edition. Already in 1948, he wrote to Rosemary, a young fan, that "the picture of Gollum in the Swedish edition of The Hobbit makes him look huge."
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Hompen
Overall seems like a weird edition.
These are lovely. I knew about the Moomins of course but I didn't know about the other stuff she did, some of which I really like. I wish the website had more of the illustrations but I guess there might be copyright issues.
I'd be particularly interested in seeing more of her illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hunting of the Snark (the latter is a great poem if you haven't read it: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29888/29888-h/29888-h.htm)
Does anyone here not know that ‘twas brillig, when the slithey toves did gyre and gimbal in the wabe?
Isn't that from Jabberwocky?
The dragon is just great. These are so charming.
I've been thinking about that illustration of Smaug for nearly 40 years and I never knew where it came from (I didn't recall it was from a Tolkien-related thing, but I remember it vividly otherwise)! I must have seen it at a friend's or the library since as far as I know we never had these at home.
I believe Tove Jansson also painted the color cover for the first authorized American edition of Fellowship of the Ring (1965). In _Letters_ one can read Tolkien’s reaction. He was quite taken aback, calling out the Emus (!) in the foreground. As if “ the illustrator hadn’t read my book.”
The 1973 Ballantine editions carried only Tolkien’s own paintings on the covers and slipcase.
I only learned of her involvement after becoming a huge Jansson fan. I had to take another look at the Emu.
It seems those were drawn by Barbara Remington [1] who didn't have time to read the books before making her illustrations. Apparently, the Lord of the Rings was in public domain in the US for a short while, so the publisher (and Tolkien) had to rush for a new 'authorized' version.
[1]: https://arrgle.com/emus-and-piracy-the-story-behind-the-lord...
Oh. Well that puts the emus out to pasture. So, two illustrators Tolkien wasn’t pleased with. I see how I conflated them.
I'm vaguely aware of what the Moomin are, yet I really like these drawings. Ok, unsure about Gollum, but the dwarves and the dragon rock.
I love these illustrations! It’s always hard for me not to automatically conjure pictures from the Ralph Bakshi animated film when I think about The Hobbit, these give me another very cool perspective.
My favorite art for The Hobbit is from the version released in the USSR.
https://www.openculture.com/2014/03/discover-soviet-era-illu...
As someone who loved the Moomintroll illustrations I find this both familiar and hilarious. I suppose I might have a different opinion if I'd actually read any of Tolkien's works.
> "She even made some of the characters especially tiny to elevate the landscapes." wish there were more examples of this in the images shown in the article.
The article seems to be more of a review of the new book than any attempt to actually discuss the topic.
Jansson’s illustrations were reused in one of the annual Tolkien calendars. I kept it on my wall for years, changing the month every so often. So… 13 illustrations reprinted
Here are some book covers:
https://www.amazon.com/Hobitti-eli-Sinne-ja-takaisin/dp/9510... https://www.amazon.com/Hobbitten-Eller-Ud-hjem-igen/dp/87023...
We're these only used in Sweden? I know I've seen some of them before, but I'm not sure if it's from decades on the internet or my school having a specific thirty year old edition of The Hobbit.
I seem to recall thinking Gollum was big, but honestly could be remembering the Shelov scene. It was long time ago.
This gets posted every few months, so you probably got it from the internet
I read Finnish version of Hobbit that had Tove's art about 40 years ago.
This was my first literary experience, my mother read it to me when I was three years old. Seeing Janssons rendering of Smaug made me remember it was this version she read for me.
Well ... it looks more like a midget-man than a hobbit. But what exactly is a hobbit? In the movie "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" from 2001, the hobbits shown pissed me off. When they started to jump on the bed, I started to root for Sauron. It got much better in the movie "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" from 2012 but even then they look mostly just like midget humans, with a bit of an elfish touch (and I hated the elves in the movie from 2001; the depiction was just lame). The only hobbit-like entity I liked was Gollum.
So how does a hobbit really look like? "Tolkien presented hobbits as a variety of humanity, or close relatives thereof".
So based on this, while Tove's pictures look more like a parody, I don't really see it as intrinsically wrong. It's just less of a "standard" depiction - Tolkien could have assumed hobbits to be anything but midget-humans, but they are mostly midgets with stronger feet.
I'm always of two minds about this kind of stuff.
First of, the illustrations are great. I love them.
Separate though, if they don't represent the original material then why not just make some new IP instead if effectively taking a piss on someone else's?
The "original material" was modified significantly - Tove's illustration of Gollum, e.g., was not inconsistent with the 1937 edition she was working from, before Tolkien rewrote the scene to bring it more in-line with the version of the character from the Lord of the Rings in the second edition.
They do represent the original material, as interpreted by the illustrator. And Tove was hardly pissing on anything - she was commissioned to illustrate a version of the book by the publisher.
That she got permission's got nothing to do with it. Abrams got permission to turn Star Wars into a Lord of the Rings fetch quests for the secret talisman. That doesn't mean he didn't piss all over "Star Wars".
I don't think it's pissing on the source material, it's adapting it.
Alastair Reynolds once expressed this sentiment in a nice way:
[0] https://www.alastairreynolds.com/release/house-of-suns-2008/Easier to say when the source is your own material.
somewhat comforting to know that this kind of reflexive fan bitching about departures from canon has been around forever
"In her illustrations in Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr, Jansson concentrated on the landscapes, she was not as interested in the characters of the story.
She even made some of the characters especially tiny to elevate the landscapes.
The illustrations consisted more of her impression of the story than literal repetitions, which many Tolkien fans found unsatisfying.
According to them, Jansson overlooked many of the central characteristics of the characters.
...she edited the pictures many times to avoid them being too much like the Moomin illustrations.
However, the readers saw the illustrations as more Jansson like than truly Tolkien like."
"Snuffkin (Snusmumriken) and the ring", that's what I see. Or Mummy troll. I saw some cartoon adaptations of the LotR, never liked it much because of the dead seriousness, but this makes it carelessness, which probably could have made me read it.
Very typical arrogance of the so-called modern "artist" mind - "it was an adventure for me", getting an assignment to complement a great work of art and making it about herself.
The problem with these modern artists is they're not working hard to improve a skill, but rather keep doing more of what comes easy hoping the world maybe recognizes their "natural genius" ... as a result they go hard on pushing that one thing unique to them (whatever it is, scriblles, splashes, infantile characters) ...
And yeah let's not forget the "you just don't understand modern art" shaming.
this comment is very typical arrogance of the modern computer nerd raised on capeshit hahahha
Dreadful and painfully Nordic.
Poor sods never know if they are getting devoured by a polar bear or not, and it shows.
Gollum as massive creature is so inaccurate to the book that i criticise too
The book never stated Gollum's size. In later revisions, Tolkien actually added that after these illustrations for that reason!