So in my (recent) copy of The Hobbit there’s an acknowledgement from the author mentioning that this edition corrects several small errors blah blah blah…
Then it mentions that also included is the ACTUAL tale of how Bilbo got the Ring instead of his initial less-than-truthful first version.
So that leads me to a question:
Did Tolkein actually have the first version of The Hobbit have a different version of ‘Riddles in the Dark’?
If so, was it changed to provide the proper set up for the Lord of the Rings?
Could they be writing from the fictional perspective, where the reader assumes Bilbo is “real” and actually wrote The Hobbit? That would then imply that Bolbo wrote out his version of how he got the Ring (he “won it” “found it” whatever, I can’t recall) rather than the truth that was eventually dragged out of him (he “cheated” to get it from Gollum). We can then assume the “revised” edition was created when Frodo “finished” the Red Book, giving the correct account, which is what we read today.
Hope that’s clear.
This rationalization was added later to get it more consistent with LotR. Originally there was a different edition that did not mention contradicting accounts.
This isn’t very helpful, but I remember once reading an anthology of fantasy fiction that contained the first version of the “Riddles in the Dark” scene. So I think it is out there and available if you want to read it.
All the above is the correct answer, but there’s also a story behind it.
Ace Books, under an old management, discovered that enough copies of the British hardcover edition of the Lord of the Rings had been imported here to violate some provision of the copyright law of the time.
They thereupon issued “pirated” editions of LOTR and The Hobbit, for which they were not obligated to pay royalties, and of course did not.
To copyright the books in America, Tolkien was forced to rewrite some portions of each book so that it could be copyrighted as a new, revised edition.
He took the opportunity to bring the storyline of The Hobbit into conformity with the early plotline of LOTR.
Hi - For anyone interested in this question please go your library or bookstore and get the big fat annotated edition of the Hobbit. I think it was published last year. It is the best source of info for the question in the original post, plus it has lots of great illustrations from various editions and tidbits about other characters.
Ahem. In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum was portrayed as a much more benign character.
From The Annotated Hobbit
JRRT had the opportunity to re-write said chapter just before a new edition of The Hobbit was to be printed, and he did so. It was pure serendipity in the timing that got the new material reprinted.
There were a few other changes, as well, to bring The Hobbit more into line with his pre-existing Silmarillion timeline. For instance, at the unexpected party, Gandalf originally asked for “cold chicken and tomatoes” rather than the “cold chicken and pickles” in the updated version, the change being made since tomatoes are a new-world food which would not have been known in the pre-Columbian Third Age Europe.
But then again, the pipeweed smoked by Hobbits (and Northmen and Wizards) is presumed to be akin to tobacco, and there are still references to potatoes in LotR, both of which are also New World plants.
A signed first edition recently sold at auction for $66,000.
My guess this is about the worst time to buy a copy. Wait until the His Dark Materials films are getting all the hype. Then, try to pick one up for a cool $15,000 or so.
It’s interesting how persistent the pipeweed=marijuana myth is, considering Tolkien specifically identified it as tobacco in The Lord of the Rings, in a section of titled “Concerning Pipe-weed”.
Since Tolkien gave his pre-Christian Europe a working postal service and clocks on the mantels, he wasn’t above some creative anachronism. He wanted the Shire to be a familiar, comfortable place, and for him that included tobacco and potatoes.
First, Donald Wollheim, editor of Ace books at the time (and who later went on to found DAW books–Donald AWollheim…geddit? :D) tried for quite a while to get rights to publish paperback editions (the HCs were, IIRC, a whopping $5.00. Each!). Unwin and Allen (or Houghton Mifflin?) refused, thinking that paperbacks were sleazy and beneath Tolkien’s dignity…there also may have been a copyright problem with paperback editions.
When Wollheim realized there was the loophole Poly mentioned in the copyright laws (I’d never known the details about that loophole! Thanks Poly!), he published the so-called (completely legal) “pirate editions” (with spiffy Jack Gaughan covers) on the assumption that when the money started rolling in, Unwin and Allen (or Houghton Mifflin?) would change their minds (and I’ve heard that they held Tolkien’s share in a trust (no cite for this) and apparently Tolkien did get paid for them.) Also note that when the revised and authorized Ballantine edition came out, Ace stopped publication although they didn’t have to (and the Ace ones had better covers…much better covers and an established “track record” so they could have gone on printing them even without the "authorized’ text.)
In large part, we have Wollheim to thank for the current popularity of the LotR today. If he hadn’t made 'em accessible to college students ($2.25 for the whole trilogy rather than $15.00 and the popularity got 'em into college bookstores), there’s a pretty good chance that the big '60s Tolkien boom wouldn’t have happened.
