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.
CGMthrowaway 1 hours ago [-]
>Her version turned out controversial because Gollum is a giant compared to Bilbo. Turns out Tolkien hadn't described Gollum's size anywhere
Cain and Abel, whom Deagol and Smeagol (Gollum) parallel, may have been giant themselves, given that Adam (their father) is specified in certain religious /apocryphal texts as being 60-100 cubits tall, or 90-150 feet.
dumbidiot 10 minutes ago [-]
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.
mlinhares 39 minutes ago [-]
What an incredible thing, had no idea this existed!
georgecmu 3 hours ago [-]
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).
George Costanza is looking at those stamps and thinking he coulda been someone in the USSR
Thorrez 56 minutes ago [-]
I'm assuming you're not saying Tolkien based his description of Bilbo on that Leonov. Are you saying the illustrator based the illustrations on Leonov?
Does Leonov actually say that? Or just that the description and illustrations are similar to him?
malkia 50 minutes ago [-]
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 :)
ricardobayes 2 hours ago [-]
In Hungary, the Lord of the Rings book was translated by Göncz Árpád who later went on to become President of Hungary.
michaeldoron 13 minutes ago [-]
Best credentials for a public servant if I ever saw one
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.
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.
Wildgoose 1 hours ago [-]
It really is worth reading. And I say that as a die-hard Tolkien fan. Genuinely highly recommended.
The illustration style reminds me of the villains from Rocky & Bullwinkle (1959-64), Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale - who were, as it were, Russian.
chkhd 2 hours ago [-]
I still have this book! my mom reading this to me and my brother was my introduction to Tolkien.. very nostalgic.
rightbyte 2 hours ago [-]
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?
bee_rider 1 hours ago [-]
They seemed a bit big to me too. Although I’m not sure to what extent that’s colored by modern interpretations.
When I was a kid and had encountered less fiction, the image of trolls that popped into my head from the Hobbit was more like Ogres in Warhammer, Warcraft, or DnD (the portrayal is pretty consistent, something like an enormous, crude, gluttonous man-like thing).
Nowadays trolls tend to be portrayed one step further toward the animalistic side. Even in the Lord of the Rings (as distinct from
The Hobbit) they’d gotten a bit more animalistic IIRC (then again, I need to reread the books, this might be colored by the movies).
KineticLensman 59 minutes ago [-]
There are very few descriptions of trolls in TLOTR. The troll that the Fellowship encounter in Moria has "a huge arm ... with a dark skin of greenish scales [and] a great, flat toeless foot". The mountain trolls who are intended to wield Grond in the siege of Minas Tirith aren't described at all.
None of them are anything like the vaguely comedic trolls in The Hobbit.
bee_rider 52 minutes ago [-]
Interesting! I’d forgotten and, I think, entirely substituted in the movie version.
sevensor 2 hours ago [-]
I thought the trolls were perfect. Big, unkempt, medium drunk. They should be a great deal bigger than Bilbo.
rightbyte 2 hours ago [-]
Ye reading some background it is the classical view of trolls as like big humans?
I mean orcs are wretched elfs so it makes sense to draw them very human in some sense.
I think my view was very much inspired by DnD. It is interesting to note how different this stuff were viewed at the time.
curioser 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder if there are other sites that show the custom illustrations for the German, French, Spanish, and Japanese translations of JRRT’s books?
mbeex 2 hours ago [-]
Google Search for an edition from Eastern Germany. Read it, when I was 10 years old (50 years ago!). It was long before all the fantasy hype, and it was magical. Klaus Ensikat was the illustrator.
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.
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.
Cain and Abel, whom Deagol and Smeagol (Gollum) parallel, may have been giant themselves, given that Adam (their father) is specified in certain religious /apocryphal texts as being 60-100 cubits tall, or 90-150 feet.
In this video Leonov mentions this fact before reading an excerpt from the book: https://youtu.be/z7hEJxTBsTs
Does Leonov actually say that? Or just that the description and illustrations are similar to him?
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.
awesomebooks.com is a good resource for Americans wanting to purchase Harper Collins versions, though those versions are not always of better quality.
When I was a kid and had encountered less fiction, the image of trolls that popped into my head from the Hobbit was more like Ogres in Warhammer, Warcraft, or DnD (the portrayal is pretty consistent, something like an enormous, crude, gluttonous man-like thing).
Nowadays trolls tend to be portrayed one step further toward the animalistic side. Even in the Lord of the Rings (as distinct from The Hobbit) they’d gotten a bit more animalistic IIRC (then again, I need to reread the books, this might be colored by the movies).
None of them are anything like the vaguely comedic trolls in The Hobbit.
I mean orcs are wretched elfs so it makes sense to draw them very human in some sense.
I think my view was very much inspired by DnD. It is interesting to note how different this stuff were viewed at the time.
https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=ensikat+illustration+h...