50 Fun Facts About The Hobbit

In which year was The Hobbit first published by George Allen & Unwin?

The first print run of 1,500 copies sold out by December on the strength of the reviews; a signed first edition has since fetched over £60,000.

Whose favourable report persuaded Allen & Unwin to publish The Hobbit?

Rayner Unwin was paid a shilling per report; he later said that in those days 'if I said it was good enough to publish, it was published'.

Where did Tolkien say he wrote the line 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'?

He was grading School Certificate papers at the time; the story was finished by late 1932 and lent to friends including C.S. Lewis.

How many dwarves make up Thorin's company that Bilbo joins?

Gandalf tricks Bilbo into hosting them all for supper; their names come from the Dvergatal, the dwarf-list in the Old Norse poem Völuspá.

What role does Gandalf propose that Bilbo fill on the expedition?

The dumbfounded hobbit is later called 'thief' by both Gollum and Smaug, echoing the cup-thief of Beowulf.

Which of these is NOT one of the dwarves in Thorin's company?

Gimli belongs to The Lord of the Rings; his father Gloin is in Thorin's company, along with Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Bifur, Bofur and Bombur.

The dwarves' lost kingdom under the Lonely Mountain is called what?

Smaug pillaged it in the days of Thorin's grandfather Thror and sleeps on the hoard; the men of Dale fled to build Lake-town on stilts.

The company's first peril is three trolls arguing over how to cook them. What becomes of the trolls?

Gandalf keeps them bickering until sunrise, a fairy-tale motif; the trolls' cache yields Orcrist, Glamdring and Bilbo's little blade Sting.

Where does Elrond reveal further secrets hidden in Thror's map?

The moon-letters can be read only by the light of a moon of the same shape and season as the one they were written under.

Lost in the goblin tunnels, Bilbo plays what kind of game with Gollum, his life at stake?

Gollum's riddles come from old sources and Bilbo's from nursery books; if Bilbo lost, his life was forfeit, and if he won Gollum would show him the way out.

In the first edition of The Hobbit, how did the riddle game in the tunnels end?

Tolkien rewrote the chapter for the 1951 second edition to fit the One Ring's corrupting power; The Lord of the Rings explains the old version as a lie Bilbo told under the Ring's influence.

The chapter in which Bilbo meets Gollum is titled what?

Tolkien sent Unwin the revised chapter as a sample of changes needed to align the book with The Lord of the Rings, then heard nothing back for years.

Gollum was named for 'a horrible swallowing noise in his throat'. What was he originally called?

He murdered his cousin Déagol for the ring, which stretched his life far beyond natural limits.

Beorn, the 'skin-changer' in The Hobbit, can take the form of what animal?

His name and those of Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki all mean 'bear'; he keeps talking animals and eats no meat from his herds.

Which dwarf falls into Mirkwood's enchanted river and must be carried, unconscious, for days?

The fattest of the company, he sleeps through the crossing and wakes hungry, dreaming of feasts.

Before it fell under the shadow of the dark sorcerer at Dol Guldur, Mirkwood had been known by what name?

The word Mirkwood itself comes from the Myrkviðr of Norse legend, and Tolkien said he had not invented it but borrowed 'a very ancient name'.

In Mirkwood, Bilbo rescues the dwarves twice: first from giant spiders and then from whose dungeons?

He smuggles them out inside barrels floated down the river to Lake-town, one of the book's most famous set-pieces.

Bilbo names his elvish blade after using it against the spiders. What does he call it?

Critics see the naming as Bilbo's entry into the ancient world of named swords found in Beowulf; the blade later passes to Frodo.

How does Bard learn about the gap in Smaug's armour?

The bird overheard Bilbo describing the bare patch on the dragon's jewelled belly; men of Dale could understand thrush-speech.

Bard kills Smaug with a family heirloom called what?

Bard is a descendant of Girion, last lord of Dale, whose city Smaug destroyed 171 years earlier; he becomes King of Dale afterwards.

Tolkien called the dragon's name 'a low philological jest', the past tense of a verb meaning what?

He explained it in a 1938 letter to The Observer; the Old English 'smeag' also means 'penetrating' or 'crafty'.

Which heirloom jewel of Thorin's family does Bilbo secretly hand to the besiegers to prevent a war?

Thorin banishes him as a traitor; Tolkien's invented etymologies link 'Arkenstone' to 'Silmaril', another jewel that breeds ruinous greed.

Whose army arrives from the Iron Hills to reinforce Thorin just before the Battle of Five Armies?

Dain is Thorin's second cousin and becomes King under the Mountain after Thorin's death; Billy Connolly played him in the films.

Who kills the goblin general in the Battle of Five Armies, fighting in bear form?

The eagles' arrival and Beorn's charge turn the battle; Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies.

What is buried with Thorin, and what is laid upon his tomb?

His nephews Fili and Kili also fall in the battle defending him; his epithet comes from a Norse dwarf-name meaning 'oaken shield'.

Tolkien took the dwarves' names, and Gandalf's, from a list of dwarves in which Old Norse poem?

The Dvergatal in the Poetic Edda has Thorin at stanza 12 and Oakenshield (Eikinskjaldi) at stanza 13; Gandalf was a dwarf-name there too.

When Bilbo finally gets home, what does he find happening at Bag End?

He had been presumed dead; the return-and-stop-the-auction ending mirrors the Scouring of the Shire in the sequel's structure.

Which prize did The Hobbit win from the New York Herald Tribune?

It was also nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and W.H. Auden later called it one of the best children's stories of the century.

Who drew the ten black-and-white illustrations and the two endpaper maps in the first edition?

He also designed the dust jacket, whose runic border spells out the title, author and publisher in transliterated English.

Which Moomin creator illustrated the Swedish and Finnish editions of The Hobbit?

The book has been translated into more than sixty languages, and Douglas Anderson's Annotated Hobbit collects art from some 25 of them.

Roughly how many copies of The Hobbit are estimated to have been sold worldwide, at the upper end?

Reliable figures are hard to pin down; estimates run from 35 million up to 100 million since 1937.

Which studio, known for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, made the 1977 animated Hobbit?

It aired on NBC on November 27, 1977, with Orson Bean as Bilbo, John Huston as Gandalf and Otto Preminger as the Elvenking; the teleplay won a Peabody.

Who voiced Smaug in the 1977 animated version?

The gravel-voiced Western star made an unusually feline dragon; Brother Theodore voiced Gollum.

Who plays Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy?

Ian Holm, Bilbo in The Lord of the Rings, returns as the older Bilbo; Guillermo del Toro had wanted Holm to play the part throughout.

Which director was originally attached to the Hobbit films before leaving over delays in 2010?

He kept a screenplay credit and had pushed for Sylvester McCoy as Radagast, a choice Jackson kept.

Benedict Cumberbatch played Smaug and which other character in the trilogy, both via motion capture?

Barry Humphries also performed the Great Goblin in motion capture; the Necromancer is Sauron in disguise at Dol Guldur.

An Unexpected Journey was shot and shown at what frame rate, a divisive first for a major release?

The high-frame-rate look drew mixed reactions, and Jackson adjusted the visuals for the next two films.

The elf Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly, is notable in Jackson's trilogy for what reason?

Jackson, Boyens and Walsh created her; Thranduil warns her not to give his son Legolas false hope, and she falls instead for the dwarf Kili.

Under what title was the third film announced before being renamed The Battle of the Five Armies?

The trilogy had started life as two films; Jackson confirmed the third in July 2012, drawing on Tolkien's appendices.

Roughly how much did the three Hobbit films gross worldwide combined?

An Unexpected Journey alone passed $1 billion; each film cost an estimated $150 million against $94 million for each Lord of the Rings film.

The first film premiered on 28 November 2012 in which city, with 100,000 people lining the red carpet?

The Embassy Theatre event was broadcast live across New Zealand; the second film premiered in Los Angeles and the third in London.

The permanent Hobbiton set that tourists visit is on a working farm near which New Zealand town?

Jackson spotted the Alexander family's sheep farm from the air in 1998 and thought it looked 'like a slice of ancient England'.

Which pop star contributed the song 'I See Fire' to The Desolation of Smaug?

Neil Finn of Crowded House sang the first film's 'Song of the Lonely Mountain', and Richard Armitage's dwarves recorded 'Misty Mountains'.

During the 2020 lockdown, which actor read the entire Hobbit aloud online for charity?

The Gollum actor read all of it in a single marathon session; he went on to record the audiobook.

How many copies were in the first print run of The Hobbit in September 1937?

The run sold out by December, and Houghton Mifflin soon reset the type for an American edition with four colour plates.

Which Old English epic did Tolkien count among his 'most valued sources' for The Hobbit?

Smaug's cup-thief episode mirrors the poem directly, and Tolkien's 1936 lecture 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics' reshaped its study.

The name of the wizard Radagast comes from a deity in which mythology?

Radogost was a Slavic god; by contrast the dwarves' names and Gandalf's come from the Old Norse Völuspá.

Whose unauthorized 1965 paperback of The Lord of the Rings prompted a refreshed 1966 text of The Hobbit?

Houghton Mifflin and Ballantine asked Tolkien for revisions to renew the US copyright, producing the third edition.

Who made the very first motion-picture adaptation of The Hobbit, a 1966 short of cartoon stills?

The 12-minute film predated BBC Radio 4's eight-part 1968 radio drama and the Rankin/Bass animated feature of 1977.

Into roughly how many languages has The Hobbit been translated?

Some languages have more than one published version, and The Annotated Hobbit reproduces artwork from some 25 of the translations.