J. R. R. Tolkien

For the first time ever, a special enhanced edition of the enchanting prelude to The Lord of the Rings, illustrated throughout with over 50 sketches, drawings, paintings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien himself. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on...

In one volume for the first time, this revised and updated examination of how J.R.R. Tolkien came to write his original masterpiece The Hobbit includes his complete unpublished draft version of the story, together with notes and illustrations by Tolkien himself. The Hobbit was first published on September 21,1937. Like its sequel, The Lord of the Rings, it is a story that "grew in the telling," and many characters and plot threads in the published...

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world's greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of the languages and history of Middle-earth as recorded in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, was one of the most prolific letter-writers...

was originally published in the 1953 edition of . In December of that year, J.R.R. Tolkien took possession of a reel-to-reel tape recorder and, some time during the first few months of 1954, decided to record 'the whole thing on tape' as a way of 'testing' the performative quality of the dramatic dialogue between Tídwald and Torhthelm. For the older Tídwald, Tolkien adopted a slower, deeper voice, perhaps akin to 'the voice of Gandalf' that W.H....

J.R.R. Tolkien famously described the Second Age of Middle-earth as a 'dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need be) told'. And for many years readers would need to be content with the tantalizing glimpses of it found within the pages of and its appendices, including the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Barad-dûr and the rise of Sauron. It was not until Christopher Tolkien published after his father's death that a fuller...

"When Thorin Oakenshield and his band of dwarves embark upon a dangerous quest to reclaim the hoard of gold stolen from them by the evil dragon Smaug, Gandalf the wizard suggests an unlikely accomplice: Bilbo Baggins, an unassuming Hobbit dwelling in peaceful Hobbiton. Along the way, the company faces trolls, goblins, giant spiders, and worse. But as they journey from the wonders of Rivendell to the terrors of Mirkwood and beyond, Bilbo will find...