Читать книгу An A-Z of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit - Sarah Oliver - Страница 31

Tolkien enjoyed sending his children letters from Father Christmas, but with his own unique slant. Often they included a polar bear, goblins and gnomes.

The story behind how J.R.R. Tolkien began writing The Hobbit is rather interesting. He was marking School Certificate papers in the early 1930s when out of the blue he decided to write ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’ on a blank page. It wasn’t until late 1932 when he had finished the story that he decided to send it to some of his friends for feedback. One such friend was C.S. Lewis, who wrote The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. He also loaned a copy of the manuscript to one of his students, Elaine Griffiths.

In 1936, during a visit from Susan Dagnall from the publisher George Allen & Unwin, Elaine suggested that Susan read Tolkien’s manuscript. She promptly did so and, suitably impressed, took it to her boss, Stanley Unwin. He enjoyed it but before making a decision, he handed it to his son Rayner, who was ten at the time. He gave it the thumbs-up and the rest is history.

As well as writing The Hobbit, all the dust jackets, maps and illustrations were designed by Tolkien, too. He knew precisely how he wanted The Hobbit to look and sent his publisher lots of letters before it was published. Rayner Unwin wrote in his publishing memoir: ‘In 1937 alone Tolkien wrote 26 letters to George Allen & Unwin, detailed, fluent, often pungent, but infinitely polite and exasperatingly precise. I doubt any author today, however famous, would get such scrupulous attention.’

Tolkien’s original dust jacket design had four colours but because of the associated costs, his publishers decided not to have a red sun.