This chapter finds Bilbo alone in his hobbit hole left to clean up after the 13 dwarves who have departed by the time Bilbo wakes. Thinking he has missed the adventure Bilbo feels a sense of both disappointment and relief. He is relieved that he will not have to exert himself but it seems he also has an innate desire for adventure that life in the Shire has not robbed him of. Perhaps it is this sense which attracted Gandalf to Bilbo to begin with. In any event Gandalf interrupts Bilbo's sense of relief with the news that he is late for the party's departure and has less than fifteen minutes to meet them at the Green Dragon Inn.
Apparently Bilbo has little to no responsibilities in the Shire as he is able to leave everything without a word to anyone with no idea of how long he will be gone. Bilbo is lucky that he cleaned up after the dwarves upon waking because if he had neglected the chore, he would likely have returned to a putrid and infested home. Leaving no notes or messages for anyone who might be looking for him Bilbo seems to either have few friends who call upon him or little regard for their concern. Or perhaps he is just swept up in the adventure and will regret his actions as he gets further from home and the adrenaline subsides.
In any event, Bilbo catches up with the dwarves at the Green Dragon just as they have assembled the supplies and provisions for the journey, unfortunately Bilbo himself is rather unprepared, forgetting a walking stick, money, clothes for the journey or a handkerchief. Luckily he is able to borrow clothes from the Dwarves and Gandalf brings along some handkerchiefs and pipe tobacco. Clearly the news about the harmful effects of smoking have not reached the Shire at this point, or in any event it is neglected as the dwarves, Gandalf and Bilbo all seem to enjoy pipeweed, or tobacco as we would call it.
The journey moves into a blissful stage for Bilbo who is still feeling the adrenaline high from the new experience and perhaps to some degree the prospect of his financial reward (1/14th of any profits of the endeavour plus expenses). Of course eventually the difficulty of the journey sets in and the meager provisions which have been brought severely dampen his spirits. It seems that the narrator of the story is close to Bilbo's feelings and thoughts and may actually be Bilbo himself, for he spends much less of the time describing everyone else's thoughts and actions as he does Bilbo's.
The encounter with the trolls is an interesting little diversion reminiscent of some fairy tales with Gandalf tricking the trolls into bickering the night away only to be turned to stone at the rising of the sun. I wonder what it is about trolls that causes them to petrify as a result of solar radiation? The narrator seems to indicate that trolls themselves are akin to the Mountain and earth, but I would imagine so are dwarves, yet they do not petrify. There seems to be some moral to the diversion as the threat of the trolls was only brought on by Bilbo's attempt to pickpocket them. One might question the injustice of stealing from a group of trolls that apparently have killed and plundered an entire village, but perhaps those were just slanderous rumours to make the theft seem more palatable. In any event the chapter seems to present an interesting turn for the quest and leaves us wondering what we can expect in Rivendell, being only a few days journey from the troll cave...
Showing posts with label Hobbit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hobbit. Show all posts
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Hobbit - Judging a Book by its Cover
As my previous post mentioned I just received the J.R.R. Tolkien collection of Easton books. They are all bound in a deep green leather with gold gilded lettering. The font choice and colouring seems quite appropriate for a Tolkien book, being playful yet old looking. The full title is on the front, The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Above the title are a set of dwarven runes from Thror's map of the Lonely Mountain. These are the runes that Elrond reads by the light of the moon, I can't recall their exact name but the top set reads roughly, "Stand by the grey stone when the thrush kn" and the bottom set reads "Of Durin's day will shine upon the keyhole". The same set of runes top and bottom appear on the back cover. I'm pleased that Easton decided to incorporate the dwarven runes into their cover design, but it is unfortunate that they chose a long piece of text and had to cut the middle out of it. For those who are curious, the full text that they are quoting is "Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun with the light of Durin's day will shine upon the keyhole". Its a line that is pretty integral to the plot but its too bad that it got cut in the middle, perhaps they could have had it continue on to the back so the whole phrase would fit or use the other shorter dwarven quote from the map, "Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast - Th. Th." This would likely have fit on the cover and could have been repeated on the back. At the bottom of the cover is a rune resembling the "Th" rune with two dots on other sides surrounded by a box. I do not recognise this rune and if anyone has any insight into what this represents please let me know in the comments. Along the spine of the book is written "The Hobbit" followed by the above mystery rune and J.R.R. Tolkien.
All of the pages are covered in 22kt gilding which looks quite nice but is a bit difficult to handle while reading because I am constantly worried about rubbing it off with my fingers or with whatever I am using to support the book. The book also has a silk ribbon bookmark, which is also a nice feature that can become annoying as the bookmark is longer than the book itself and as a result when it is placed you need to tuck in the excess ribbon into another page of the book which can be cumbersome while trying to maintain the gilding on the page edges.
The front and back inside covers are moire fabric with a nice sheen that is pleasant to the touch. Just inside the moire on the first page is an additional signed sketch by Michael Hague that was added after market. Michael Hague is a very popular illustrator of Tolkien and other fantasy works. In this case his sketch is a profile of Gandalf's head with typical hat and long beard. The signature appears on the left side of Gandalf's hat. I have searched on line and the signature and style of sketch are very typical of Michael Hague and I doubt forgery although I'm not really an expert on the topic. The frontispiece illustration, by Michael Hague is an image of some of the 13 dwarves (I couldn't tell you who is who as I tend to forget the combination of hood colour and character name whenever I read this book) as well as Gandalf and Bilbo with the Lonely Mountain off in the distance. Perhaps the illustration is from the north side of the Long Lake just before the dwarves cross the desolation of Smaug to reach the mountain. It is a lovely illustration on glossy paper though the colours seem somewhat muted, perhaps by design.
The interior title page says The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien illustrated by the Author, Frontispiece by Michael Hague, The Easton Press Norwalk, Connecticut. The copyright is from 1966 with the permission of Houghton Mifflin, with the frontispiece copyright 1984. As an aside, as a Canadian I was unable to order this book directly from Easton Press because they do not have distribution rights to Canada. I'm not sure if Houghton Mifflin retained distribution rights to Canada or perhaps another firm owned the rights in Canada and was unwilling to deal with Easton. The table of contents contains 19 chapters, which I will try to document as I read them. Following the table of contents is a green map (Thror's map) of the Lonely Mountain and surrounding areas likely illustrated by Tolkien himself. It contains both the normal runes quoted above as well as the moon runes also quoted above. The normal runes are linked to the D rune on the western side of the lonely mountain. Another curious quality of the map is that the top of the map points East rather than North, apparently this is traditional among dwarvish maps in Middle Earth. Unfortunately a small section of the map gets swallowed up by the binding as it goes across two pages rather than one.
Just before chapter 1 is a one page introduction by Tolkien dealing with the differences between English as presented in this book and English as traditionally written. Dwarves and dwarvish are particularly singled out as opposed to the traditional dwarf and dwarfish, we have to wait until the Lord of the Rings to learn exactly why there is this difference. Orcs are also mentioned as different from orca or whale, which I doubt many people familiar with fantasy literature would confuse today but perhaps when Tolkien first wrote this book it was a likely confusion as fantasy was not in the vibrant state that it is now, no doubt due to a significant contribution from Tolkien himself. This introduction also goes through the various runes found on the map as well as an explanation of letters that may have runes that are not used on the map. I have read that Tolkien often received letters written in dwarvish runes and elven script. I wonder if he ever wrote back in the same. Well I suppose that is all for now before I begin reading the first chapter.Very pleased with the book so far.
Above the title are a set of dwarven runes from Thror's map of the Lonely Mountain. These are the runes that Elrond reads by the light of the moon, I can't recall their exact name but the top set reads roughly, "Stand by the grey stone when the thrush kn" and the bottom set reads "Of Durin's day will shine upon the keyhole". The same set of runes top and bottom appear on the back cover. I'm pleased that Easton decided to incorporate the dwarven runes into their cover design, but it is unfortunate that they chose a long piece of text and had to cut the middle out of it. For those who are curious, the full text that they are quoting is "Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun with the light of Durin's day will shine upon the keyhole". Its a line that is pretty integral to the plot but its too bad that it got cut in the middle, perhaps they could have had it continue on to the back so the whole phrase would fit or use the other shorter dwarven quote from the map, "Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast - Th. Th." This would likely have fit on the cover and could have been repeated on the back. At the bottom of the cover is a rune resembling the "Th" rune with two dots on other sides surrounded by a box. I do not recognise this rune and if anyone has any insight into what this represents please let me know in the comments. Along the spine of the book is written "The Hobbit" followed by the above mystery rune and J.R.R. Tolkien.
All of the pages are covered in 22kt gilding which looks quite nice but is a bit difficult to handle while reading because I am constantly worried about rubbing it off with my fingers or with whatever I am using to support the book. The book also has a silk ribbon bookmark, which is also a nice feature that can become annoying as the bookmark is longer than the book itself and as a result when it is placed you need to tuck in the excess ribbon into another page of the book which can be cumbersome while trying to maintain the gilding on the page edges.
The front and back inside covers are moire fabric with a nice sheen that is pleasant to the touch. Just inside the moire on the first page is an additional signed sketch by Michael Hague that was added after market. Michael Hague is a very popular illustrator of Tolkien and other fantasy works. In this case his sketch is a profile of Gandalf's head with typical hat and long beard. The signature appears on the left side of Gandalf's hat. I have searched on line and the signature and style of sketch are very typical of Michael Hague and I doubt forgery although I'm not really an expert on the topic. The frontispiece illustration, by Michael Hague is an image of some of the 13 dwarves (I couldn't tell you who is who as I tend to forget the combination of hood colour and character name whenever I read this book) as well as Gandalf and Bilbo with the Lonely Mountain off in the distance. Perhaps the illustration is from the north side of the Long Lake just before the dwarves cross the desolation of Smaug to reach the mountain. It is a lovely illustration on glossy paper though the colours seem somewhat muted, perhaps by design.
The interior title page says The Hobbit or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien illustrated by the Author, Frontispiece by Michael Hague, The Easton Press Norwalk, Connecticut. The copyright is from 1966 with the permission of Houghton Mifflin, with the frontispiece copyright 1984. As an aside, as a Canadian I was unable to order this book directly from Easton Press because they do not have distribution rights to Canada. I'm not sure if Houghton Mifflin retained distribution rights to Canada or perhaps another firm owned the rights in Canada and was unwilling to deal with Easton. The table of contents contains 19 chapters, which I will try to document as I read them. Following the table of contents is a green map (Thror's map) of the Lonely Mountain and surrounding areas likely illustrated by Tolkien himself. It contains both the normal runes quoted above as well as the moon runes also quoted above. The normal runes are linked to the D rune on the western side of the lonely mountain. Another curious quality of the map is that the top of the map points East rather than North, apparently this is traditional among dwarvish maps in Middle Earth. Unfortunately a small section of the map gets swallowed up by the binding as it goes across two pages rather than one.
Just before chapter 1 is a one page introduction by Tolkien dealing with the differences between English as presented in this book and English as traditionally written. Dwarves and dwarvish are particularly singled out as opposed to the traditional dwarf and dwarfish, we have to wait until the Lord of the Rings to learn exactly why there is this difference. Orcs are also mentioned as different from orca or whale, which I doubt many people familiar with fantasy literature would confuse today but perhaps when Tolkien first wrote this book it was a likely confusion as fantasy was not in the vibrant state that it is now, no doubt due to a significant contribution from Tolkien himself. This introduction also goes through the various runes found on the map as well as an explanation of letters that may have runes that are not used on the map. I have read that Tolkien often received letters written in dwarvish runes and elven script. I wonder if he ever wrote back in the same. Well I suppose that is all for now before I begin reading the first chapter.Very pleased with the book so far.
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