The Hobbit was first published
On this day · 21 September 1937
On this day in 1937, a small London print run introduced Bilbo Baggins and, with him, the world of Middle-earth.
On September 21, 1937, the London firm George Allen & Unwin published J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, opening with the now-famous line about a hobbit who lived in a hole in the ground.
The book began life as a story Tolkien told his children. The publisher reportedly tested the manuscript on Stanley Unwin’s ten-year-old son, whose enthusiastic report helped seal the decision to print it. The first run was a modest 1,500 copies, illustrated in black and white by Tolkien himself, who also designed the dust jacket.
Those copies sold out before Christmas, and a second printing followed within the year. The success persuaded Allen & Unwin to ask for a sequel.
That request eventually became The Lord of the Rings — a job Tolkien expected to finish quickly and instead spent over a decade on.
A quiet children’s book had founded one of the twentieth century’s most enduring fictional worlds.
Sources & references
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