[We] have in The Hobbit and its sequel what is in fact the same story, told first very simply, and then again, very intricately. Both works have the same theme, a quest on which a most unheroic hobbit achieves heroic stature; they have the same structure, the "there and back again" of the quest romance, and both extend the quest through the cycle of one year, The Hobbit from spring to spring, the Rings from fall to fall. The episodic structures of the two books are so closely parallel one says...

[The] hobbits are the race par excellence in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. One can tell this in part because Tolkien uses their point of view, but even more because he obviously likes them very much indeed, and without evading their shortcomings in his portrayal. I can also tell from a letter which Tolkien sent me in 1958, in which he said, "I am in fact a hobbit." So what are hobbits like, these original and most important creatures of Tolkien's? Their main qualities are appare...

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit has received very little serious critical attention other than as the precursor of The Lord of the Rings. It has usually been praised as a good introduction to the trilogy, and as a children's book, but anyone familiar with psychoanalysis cannot avoid being tantalized by recurrent themes and motifs in the three stories. Bilbo's story has surprising depths that can be plumbed by the reader who is receptive to psychoanalytic interpretations. The central pattern...

Beginning with The Hobbit, a tale of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, a small, intelligent representative of a people whose simple underground houses have sometimes led me to suspect that they are remote relatives of rabbits, we pass from a fascinating child's tale to the great orchestra of The Lord of the Rings, in which a whole Secondary World is created and successfully sustained through three large volumes. These are sure to remain Tolkien's life work; and are certainly destined to outlast...