When Tolkien changed The Hobbit

In the council of Elrond Bilbos says "But I will tell now the true story, and if some have heard me tell it otherwise (...)". I never realized that not only Bilbo was adressing the council members but also Tolkien was adressing those readers who read the first version.

When I first read The Hobbit as a child, my dad asked me to tell me about it as I finished each dive into its pages (I read it over several days). He had read it when he was 14 and it was still a new book- and had often thought about it when he was in the Navy during the war. So when I told him of the riddle game part, he indeed remembered that the ring was to be Bilbo's prize in the contest. We both thought he had misremembered it- after all he read it in 1940, years before I was even born. Now it all makes sense.

I can only imagine how pleased Tolkien must have felt at not just getting his revision published, but entwining it into his later stories and making it a plot point.

When I was nine and attending a very small country school, our teacher was the headmaster. He was an extraordinarily gifted script writer and amateur dramatist, and read The Hobbit to us every afternoon. He 'did' every voice perfectly, from Gandalf to The Hobbit to Gollum, while we sat there completely bewitched and enchanted. I can hear his voice, with each of the different voices, perfectly as if it were only yesterday, and not fifty years ago. Bless you Mr Cookson, and Mr Tolkien, you gave us a great gift and love of literature.

"Tolkien wasn't like other writers." That is such an understatement.

I actually did know this. My grandmother used to tell me about it when she read it to me as a child. Her reading these books to me as a young child is what made me fall in love with high fantasy.

Did Bilbo know it was "someone else's property"? I mean if I found a gold ring buried in the mud in a mountain cavern that's sparsely populated by goblins I would have figured it belonged to a long dead victim of said goblins and was just lost to time.

Ingenious how he used both versions as canon the way he did. It seems meta in a way, and completely necessary. A brilliant man and author, and forever my favorite.

Dude was so GOATed that he could fill a MASSIVE plot hole so well that it actually REPAIRS your cars’ shocks when you drive over it.

I wish more authors did this. Sometimes things in a series become more complicated than an author originally intends, and by going back they can fix any speedbumps in the overall story.

My favorite trivia about Tolkien’s changes to The Hobbit is that he felt compelled to amend Gollum’s description to include his small size after Tove Jannson (creator of the Moomins) drew him as a giant when she submitted illustrations for a possible illustrated edition.

It is quite amazing to think that Tolkien really didn’t have to change much to align both tales. Goes to show how deeply connected each was to his world vision and all its intricate threads.

Tolkien writes a fun childrens story, business men were like "that was great, make another!" so he made an great epic with themes and serious tone

Making Gollum a greater threat to Bilbo’s life and thus creating the challenge to Bilbo to show mercy for the creature that nearly killed and ate him is such a powerful moment. Which is why, despite its own set of qualities, I am not a fan of how its handled in the Rankin Bass adaptation with him leaping over Gollum yelling “Ta-taaa” while invisible. Its far too flippant and lacking artfulness.

We also hear Bilbo, just before re-telling the true story at the Counsel of Elrond, directly apologize for the older made-up story as there were a few people like Gloin at that meeting that had only heard that version from him. In that apology, coming after giving up the ring willingly and then living in Rivendell for may years he also seemed to imply - at least as I read it - that he finally understood this strange behavior was probably related to the ring's effect on him. I suspect Bilbo is supposed to have understood a lot more than he openly reveals, and of course this makes the scenes in Rivendell where he is sending poor Frodo off with the one ring all the more poignant. In the PJ movie I'd say the scene where Bilbo apologizes to Frodo actually seems more explicit about this, but probably that is only because film is just a more explicit medium. Bilbo was ALSO supposed to be the translator/compiler of the "Silmarilion" as well during that stay in Rivendell, and I imagine him slowly putting two and two together over the years as to what the workings of fate tended to look like, and how such things might be related to his and Frodo's stories. Personally I would have loved a written account of Bilbo interviewing Glorfindel about the fall of Gondolin. 😂 Anyway, I think we would be hard pressed to find other examples in history where a RETCON of a novel by its author, corresponds to a RETCON of another author's story who is himself a character in the original novels.

Amazing! It has so much more meaning and it's as if we get to hear Tolkien himself talking about the change in the story which is pretty epic when you think about it.

It also speaks to the great respect Mr. Tolkien had for his readers.

I'm baffled because this is the first time I've heard about this, and not because I see myself as some kind of Tolkien expert, but because I always binge-watch any content creator which talks about Tolkien and his work, and has been doing this for years, and somehow no one have told me about what could arguably be the most ingenious bit of Tolkien's work.

Bilbo saying something like “I lied before, here’s the true story” during the council of Elrond confused me when I read it. A friend who was familiar with Tolkien explained the change to me, and eventually I was able to read the original text myself in the Annotated Hobbit.

Got to appreciate that attention to detail -- hardly anyone is that thorough.