History of The Hobbit
Jan. 29th, 2010 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamflowerI was sent home early from work today, so I thought I'd finish reading my first volume of The History of The Hobbit.
It's really been fascinating-- it a lot of ways it was easier to read than HoMe-- there were still a lot of footnotes and so forth, but I think there was far less "messing about" with The Hobbit. It seems that before the publication, there were only two handwritten manuscripts, and two typescripts, rather than the many masses of papers which were written during the creation of LotR and the Silm.
It's also an eye-opener as to how much still-unpublished stuff is still out there, available only to scholars-- I think we fans need to start besieging the publishers to release some of these things!
Anyway, I thought I might spam y'all with a few of the interesting factoids, insights and plot bunnies I've gotten from reading this so far!
I can't wait to dig into Part Two!
Here's a little bit I thought some of you might find more than a little intriguing:
It may sound a bit familiar at first, but pay close attention to it--"even to Old Took's great-uncle Bullroarer, who was so large he could ride a shetland pony, and charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields. He knocked their king Fingolfin's head clean off with a wooden club; it sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment."
There are two things rather important that were changed from this portion of the First Manuscript. Who can spot them, and who can tell me just why the second one is so amusing?
It's really been fascinating-- it a lot of ways it was easier to read than HoMe-- there were still a lot of footnotes and so forth, but I think there was far less "messing about" with The Hobbit. It seems that before the publication, there were only two handwritten manuscripts, and two typescripts, rather than the many masses of papers which were written during the creation of LotR and the Silm.
It's also an eye-opener as to how much still-unpublished stuff is still out there, available only to scholars-- I think we fans need to start besieging the publishers to release some of these things!
Anyway, I thought I might spam y'all with a few of the interesting factoids, insights and plot bunnies I've gotten from reading this so far!
I can't wait to dig into Part Two!
Here's a little bit I thought some of you might find more than a little intriguing:
It may sound a bit familiar at first, but pay close attention to it--"even to Old Took's great-uncle Bullroarer, who was so large he could ride a shetland pony, and charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields. He knocked their king Fingolfin's head clean off with a wooden club; it sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment."
There are two things rather important that were changed from this portion of the First Manuscript. Who can spot them, and who can tell me just why the second one is so amusing?