I found this starting with the recent XKCD comic about Tom Bombadil in LOTR, seeing he appeared in a 1991 Soviet TV adaptation that’s now on YouTube, checking here if anyone had posted it, and someone had provided the link to this book in that thread. Really cool find.
As bonus trivia, depiction of Bilbo was based on the "short, round stature, expressive eyes, broad and open face" of the famous Soviet actor Yevgeniy Leonov (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Leonov).
Tove Jansson, author of the Moomins, also illustrated "The Hobbit" in the 1960s.
Her version turned out controversial because Gollum is a giant compared to Bilbo. Turns out Tolkien hadn't described Gollum's size anywhere, and the author actually reworded future editions of the book to make it clear that Gollum is a small creature.
In my opinion Jansson's "Hobbit" is a great interpretation by a legendary artist, and this Gollum controversy has overshadowed it too much.
The Soviet 1970s version (the OP link here) has an obvious debt to Jansson's illustrations, but the style is much more conventional and stiff. Jansson's linework and compositions are exquisite.
I can see why one would think Gollum was huge early on. Without the context of the Lord of the Rings (where it’s established he was something like a hobbit before becoming Gollum), and also the fact that he ate goblins who wandered in his area of the caves, one might easily guess he was huge.
> the author actually reworded future editions of the book to make it clear that Gollum is a small creature
The primary retconning occurred in 1951, when the encounter in The Hobbit between Bilbo and Gollum was rewritten to be confrontational rather than amicable, because TLOTR now needed the Ring to have a malevolent influence. The retconning is reflected in Bilbo's apology in the Council of Elrond to those (i.e. Gloin, but implicitly the readers) who may have heard a different version of his story. I'd love to see a first edition of the Hobbit to see what Tolkien actually did say about Gollum.
[Edit]. Just checked my (third edition) copy of The Hobbit. It only says that Gollum was "a small slimy creature" who "had a little boat". There aren't any other descriptions of their relative size, except that Bilbo actually jumps over Gollum's head when escaping him (Gollum is crouched down at this point), as a sibling comment has just observed.
Fascinating - Jansson's artwork is lovely. Thank you for sharing it!
I think the huge Gollum is a very understandable misinterpretation, but I think it's likely false the text she worked from was ambiguous about Gollum's size.
If she was working from the 1951 revision, which seems likely if she was working in the 60s, then there is an explicit cue in the text showing that Gollum must be roughly Bilbo's size, when Bilbo is escaping the caves:
> Straight over Gollum’s head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air...
If Bilbo could jump over Gollum with a three-foot leap, Gollum cannot be a giant.
That said, it's well after the passage she illustrated, and would require a pretty attentive reader to catch, so as I said, the mistake is certainly understandable.
Additional caveat that I've not read the second edition of The Hobbit, only more recent ones, so it's conceivable that passage wasn't _exactly_ as I've quoted it.
I strongly suspect was largely as written, however, and even without the explicit numbers, if Bilbo jumps over Gollum, the inference remains largely the same.
Most books are, sadly, quite worthless nowadays (monetary value). But the Tove Jansson illustrated, swedish edition of Bilbo is still a sought-after book that usually goes for hundreds of dollars.
Here is an ongoing auction on Tradera (the swedish ebay), currently at SEK 3050 (~$320):
I always thought that the passages that talk about Smeagol before he was corrupted by the ring - made it rather easy to think of him as a hobbit or maybe a human.
It's still on my to-be-read list, but anyone exploring the Russian/Tolkien rabbit hole might also like The Last Ringbearer, which is a retelling from the other side's perspective. The English translation was never officially published but is on archive.org and probably other less reputable sites.
Worth noting: the author, Kirill Yeskov, authored a great book on the Earth history and the old theories of it. And the reasons he wrote The Last Ringbearer, according to his (now deleted) blog, were 1) the geology of Tolkien's world was impossible, the landmass had to be bigger, 2) if the orcs were an army, there must have been a country, a money system, a bureacracy, a developed economy, and so on. From that country's perspective, the elves were a small bunch of rioters on the fringe of the empire.
It feels like the illustrator didn't read the book? The stone trolls are giants? (Am I missremembering that they were trolls?) And the battle is between two human armies. Surely goblins were described in Bilbo as not human barbarians?
For what it’s worth I personally read The Hobbit for the first time as a child a few years after watching the first Harry Potter movie.
So when I read The Hobbit I imagined the trolls to be similar to the giant troll from the first Harry Potter movie. The one that goes after Hermione when she’s crying in the restroom and then Harry and Ron have to save her.
My sister read me the first chapter of this edition of The Hobbit and refused to read me any more. So I had to read the rest myself to find out what happens. It became the first "grown up" book I ever finished.
When I read LoTR a few years later, these illustrations formed the images of what hobbits, dwarfs, and Gollum looked like in my minds' eye. Decades later, having seen the Peter Jackson films several times, Bilbo still looks wrong to me as I expect Leonov; Gollum looks wrong too for that matter.
Similar experience for me, except my imagery was influenced by the Brothers Hildebrandt. I collected all their cards and was obsessed with the detail in them.
“Down the face of a precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. […] The black crawling shape was now three-quarters of the way down, and perhaps fifty feet or less above the cliff's foot.[…] They peered down at the dark pool. A little black head appeared at the far end of the basin, just out of the deep shadow of the rocks.”
No visual version of Tolkien’s works could ever be made now which depicts Gollum accurately.
In Bulgaria, our longest running comic magazine (Дъга ("Duga") e.g. Rainbow) had version of the Hobbit - https://www.endorion.org/books/comics/ - This was in fact the first version of the "books" I got exposed in, and then much later read the real stuff :)
Another illustrator from the 70's was Ingahild Grathmer[1] which was said to be a favourite by Tolkien himself[2]. Maybe he was polite because of the noteriaty (not sure if known at the time) but I do like them as well. Have a look at the documentary on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/rNqVqzIxi3A&t=24m19s
Tolkien was generally favorable to any illustrations that followed the text; he actually explicitly mentioned that he was creating a “legendarium” which would have different interpretations.
What he didn’t like was illustrations by those who never even read the descriptions, or created things based on other media (Tolkien dwarves vs Snow White dwarfs, for example).
I enjoy all illustrations of LOTR & The Silmarillion from BEFORE the Jackson trilogy. I love the film adaptation but one could say that it's been _too_ influential in shaping the portrayal of Tolkien's characters and world.
Especially to people born after the movies came out.
Jackson’s heavy reliance on some of the famous illustrators from before the movies at least gives them some connection; but it’s hard to remember how I imagined Moria before I saw the films.
The Soviet illustrations remind me of Samuri Jack.
I read my youngest The Hobbit recently and being familiar with Lord of The Rings and knowing there is a little disconnect between LOTR and the Hobbit ... I was still surprised by how much the Hobbit jumps from event to event and leaves things unsaid, but lingers other places a great deal. It feels almost unpolished.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 71.6 ms ] threadIn this video Leonov mentions this fact before reading an excerpt from the book: https://youtu.be/z7hEJxTBsTs
Her version turned out controversial because Gollum is a giant compared to Bilbo. Turns out Tolkien hadn't described Gollum's size anywhere, and the author actually reworded future editions of the book to make it clear that Gollum is a small creature.
You can see the image here:
https://www.thepopverse.com/jrr-tolkien-the-hobbit-tove-jans...
In my opinion Jansson's "Hobbit" is a great interpretation by a legendary artist, and this Gollum controversy has overshadowed it too much.
The Soviet 1970s version (the OP link here) has an obvious debt to Jansson's illustrations, but the style is much more conventional and stiff. Jansson's linework and compositions are exquisite.
The primary retconning occurred in 1951, when the encounter in The Hobbit between Bilbo and Gollum was rewritten to be confrontational rather than amicable, because TLOTR now needed the Ring to have a malevolent influence. The retconning is reflected in Bilbo's apology in the Council of Elrond to those (i.e. Gloin, but implicitly the readers) who may have heard a different version of his story. I'd love to see a first edition of the Hobbit to see what Tolkien actually did say about Gollum.
[Edit]. Just checked my (third edition) copy of The Hobbit. It only says that Gollum was "a small slimy creature" who "had a little boat". There aren't any other descriptions of their relative size, except that Bilbo actually jumps over Gollum's head when escaping him (Gollum is crouched down at this point), as a sibling comment has just observed.
I think the huge Gollum is a very understandable misinterpretation, but I think it's likely false the text she worked from was ambiguous about Gollum's size.
If she was working from the 1951 revision, which seems likely if she was working in the 60s, then there is an explicit cue in the text showing that Gollum must be roughly Bilbo's size, when Bilbo is escaping the caves:
> Straight over Gollum’s head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air...
If Bilbo could jump over Gollum with a three-foot leap, Gollum cannot be a giant.
That said, it's well after the passage she illustrated, and would require a pretty attentive reader to catch, so as I said, the mistake is certainly understandable.
Additional caveat that I've not read the second edition of The Hobbit, only more recent ones, so it's conceivable that passage wasn't _exactly_ as I've quoted it.
I strongly suspect was largely as written, however, and even without the explicit numbers, if Bilbo jumps over Gollum, the inference remains largely the same.
Here is an ongoing auction on Tradera (the swedish ebay), currently at SEK 3050 (~$320):
https://www.tradera.com/item/341571/686383148/j-r-r-tolkien-...
A very good one, Vaclav Havel, who BTW pioneered typographical poetry.
awesomebooks.com is a good resource for Americans wanting to purchase Harper Collins versions, though those versions are not always of better quality.
So when I read The Hobbit I imagined the trolls to be similar to the giant troll from the first Harry Potter movie. The one that goes after Hermione when she’s crying in the restroom and then Harry and Ron have to save her.
https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/archives/03gGWt8x1MUJt...
When I read LoTR a few years later, these illustrations formed the images of what hobbits, dwarfs, and Gollum looked like in my minds' eye. Decades later, having seen the Peter Jackson films several times, Bilbo still looks wrong to me as I expect Leonov; Gollum looks wrong too for that matter.
“Down the face of a precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. […] The black crawling shape was now three-quarters of the way down, and perhaps fifty feet or less above the cliff's foot.[…] They peered down at the dark pool. A little black head appeared at the far end of the basin, just out of the deep shadow of the rocks.”
No visual version of Tolkien’s works could ever be made now which depicts Gollum accurately.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/581457001928701869/
https://tainthemeat.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/o-poveste-cu-un...
(Go to 24:19 for Ingahild herself)
[1] a.k.a. Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Margrethe_II_of_Denmark) [2] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66764/time-queen-denmark...
What he didn’t like was illustrations by those who never even read the descriptions, or created things based on other media (Tolkien dwarves vs Snow White dwarfs, for example).
Especially to people born after the movies came out.
I read my youngest The Hobbit recently and being familiar with Lord of The Rings and knowing there is a little disconnect between LOTR and the Hobbit ... I was still surprised by how much the Hobbit jumps from event to event and leaves things unsaid, but lingers other places a great deal. It feels almost unpolished.
https://www.amazon.com/Towers-Authorized-Revised-Special-Foe...
I bought the whole set of those.