Thursday, July 28, 2011

Page One: The Hobbit


Page One: The Hobbit, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I saw someone do this on Tumblr a couple weeks ago, and I fell in love with the idea, so I'm starting a whole new series of blog posts, which I will intend to do weekly but which, as with all such things, I will actually do whenever I think to do one. The idea is a simple one: the first page of books that mean a great deal to me.

For my purposes, I will generally define "page one" as the first page of the actual story, whether that be a prologue or the first chapter. Anyway, here is Page One of The Annotated Hobbit, featuring the complete text by JRRT with annotations by Douglas A. Anderson. This book is full of fascinating details about the writing and publication history of The Hobbit, and of course, the ever-wonderful story of The Hobbit, which I continue to believe is absolutely essential to any proper reading of The Lord of the Rings.

1 comment:

Kal said...

Absoulutely essential reading. As epic as it is, it really makes LOTR even greater a story because of the strong foundation it sets in that world. I never see much relationship between Frodo and Gimli. I always wondered why that was and why it was never pursued in the movies? You would think there would be some residue emotions left over from that first Hobbit/Dwarf adventure.