The History of The Hobbit by John D Rateliff (2007) - a review

John D Rateliff. The History of The Hobbit - Two volumes: Part One: Mr Baggins; Part 2: Return to Bag End. HarperCollins: London, 2007. pp. xxxix; 905.

It is long overdue that I said something about how much I have enjoyed and learned from John D Rateliff's two volume A History of the Hobbit - which is The Hobbit equivalent of Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series. 

So here it is!

I have owned this book for a long time, since shortly after its publication; and have frequently referred to it. 

But until recently I never sat-down and went-through the two volumes from beginning to end; although, even now, I have not read the whole thing - there is a lot in it. 

In explaining the delay; I can only suppose that I must have been (unconsciously) holding-back from expressing an overview due to the partial, rather random and scattered, nature of my acquaintance. 

The book is structured around the earliest known and developing drafts of The Hobbit; the later (1947) modifications of (especially) the Gollum scene, to bring it into line with the plot of The Lord of the Rings; the 1960 partial and (I am pleased to say) abandoned attempt to rewrite The Hobbit in the style of Lord of the Rings - and various other relevant and interesting texts such as real and putative sources. 

Rateliff provides copious explanatory notes on Tolkien's drafts; but also - and these I liked best of all - a series of short essays; in which he provides many kinds of background information. 

These background essays range very widely; for instance relating the drafts to Tolkien's other works, Tolkien's languages (and other languages), to folklore and fairy tale, and to other (especially earlier) fantasy authors such as George Macdonald, and Lord Dunsany (on whom Rateliff is particularly an expert).   

I found many of these essays to be absolutely fascinating, and recommend them strongly even to those who are not especially interested in the process by which The Hobbit got written and modified. 

Some can be read pretty much in isolation; for instance in Part 1 there are essays on races such as dwarves, trolls, elves, giants, goblins, wolves and eagles. In Part 2 there are dragons (and dragon sickness), the thrush, the Arkenstone, ravens, and the nature of Bolg (the goblin king). 

And that is just a sample of the topics - there are a good deal more. 

What makes The History of the Hobbit a book I greatly appreciate owning, is the almost inexhaustible range and depth of Rateliff's scholarship - such that every re-read leads to a previously un-noticed discovery. 

Equally important is Rateliff's enthusiasm-for and enjoyment-of The Hobbit in all its unique quality - which shines throughout the whole production. 

Altogether, for me The History of the Hobbit is among the top-ten of books written about Tolkien's works - and is the best of all books about The Hobbit. 

Many bullets dodged, but he gets it right - in the end! Tolkien's character names

Reading The History of Middle Earth (edited by Christopher Tolkien) and The History of the Hobbit (edited by John D Rateliff); it becomes clear that Tolkien greatly improved his books during the course of revision; which also implies that the early drafts sometimes contained some rather, um, bad stuff. 

And this even applies to the area for which Tolkien is justly greatly renowned, indeed unsurpassed: the matter of names. 

The excellence of Tolkien's names (of places, as well as people, and other beings) is that they are derived from coherent etymology, which is rooted in particular languages (some historical, others invented) by Tolkien's philological expertise. 

But this could lead him astray - sometimes - when a character's "correct" name, according to the rules of the languages ascribed to his imaginary worlds, sounded in some way wrong for the modern reader. 

This began with The Hobbit, when the wizard's name was at first Bladorthin (instead of Gandalf).

Bladorthin probably derived from an early form of Tolkien's Elvish language Sindarin - and therefore satisfied Tolkien's demand for internal linguistic coherence of names. 

But it just doesn't sound right to the modern ear! - with its hard-not-to-think-about implications of "a thin bladder". 

The wizard was eventually given the name of Gandalf, which was originally given to the "Thorin" character - and was (like all the other dwarf names, except Balin) taken from a Norse name-list of dwarves from the Elder Edda.  

Then again - instead of what became the mellifluous "Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror" - we might have had "Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Fimbulfambi"! 

Fimbulfambi is another dwarf name from Old Norse - and so has impeccable philological credentials within The Hobbit's linguistic context; but it just sounds silly, indeed laughably so, to modern English speakers. 

It is a measure of Tolkien's excellence as a creative writer, rather than an applied philologist; that he was prepared to take this into account and allow it priority; then go back and provide a different and more sensible alternative name. 

Another "wrong" name from the earliest mythologies in Lost Tales; was calling the High Elves who became the Noldor by the name of Gnomes. 

Gnome was etymologically-related (in the "real world") to knowledge and wisdom (e.g. gnostic and gnosis) - but during the time Tolkien was working on the Silmarillion material and LotR; deliberately vulgar and kitsch "garden gnomes" became very popular. 

So, again reluctantly, Tolkien made the change.    

Even in The Lord of the Rings, there were problems with some of the names of major characters. 

Frodo was, for a long time, called Bingo - which certainly had the wrong connotations for a mid-twentieth century English reader. 

In this case, Bingo was probably less about philology, and perhaps more a matter of having the character named after a favourite teddy bear and family, belonging to his daughter ("the Bingos"). 

But, in the end - and despite having got used to Bingo - Tolkien bit the bullet and made the revision. 

Another too-silly name was Trotter as the name for the character who became Strider or Aragorn. 

I have already told the story behind this name, and how it led Tolkien towards what would have been his most cringe-inducing decision! 

But, as usual, eventually and before it was too-late, Tolkien dodged the bullet. 

As a final and notorious example; Galadriel's husband Celeborn, the Lord of Lothlorien - was to be called Teleporno.

Indeed, in some possibly canonical backstory versions, that may have remained one of his linguistically-valid names, when the Fellowship met with him in Lothlorien, and after. 

Fortunately, Teleporno did not get into The Lord of the Rings - or else goodness knows what the "Bored of the Rings" parodists would have made of it. 

Whether Tolkien recognized the danger of Teleporno is not recorded, so far as I know; certainly its suggestive qualities would not have been so apparent in the 1950s. But at any rate, his admirers were spared such embarrassment until after the History of Middle Earth appeared a couple of decades after the author's demise. 

My semi-serious point is that - as so often when dealing with a genius - Tolkien's great strengths were also a source of weakness; strengths and weakness usually being (as Nietzsche, coincidentally another eminent philologist, pointed-out) two sides of the same coin. 

(Because they are derived from strong inner motivations.) 

In other words; the same reason that Tolkien's names are unsurpassed - their deep and coherent derivation; also contained a tendency to ignore the superficial and obvious ways in which such names would strike the non-philologist who was ignorant of relevant history. 

Yet, because Tolkien was an even greater writer than he was philologist; he always seems to have reached the right decision - in the end.