Editions
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. of London published the first edition of The Hobbit in September 1937. It was illustrated with many black-and-white drawings by Tolkien himself. The original printing numbered a mere 1,500 copies and sold out by December due to enthusiastic reviews. Houghton Mifflin of Boston and New York prepared an American edition to be released early in 1938 in which four of the illustrations would be color plates. Allen & Unwin decided to incorporate the color illustrations into their second printing, released at the end of 1937. Despite the book's popularity, wartime conditions forced the London publisher to print small runs of the remaining two printings of the first edition.
As remarked above, Tolkien substantially revised The Hobbit's text describing Bilbo's dealings with Gollum in order to blend the story better into what The Lord of the Rings had become. This revision became the second edition, published in 1951 in both UK and American editions. Slight corrections to the text have appeared in the third (1966) and fourth editions (1978).
New English-language editions of The Hobbit spring up periodically, despite the book's age, with at least fifty editions having been published to date. Each comes from a different publisher or bears distinctive cover art, internal art, or substantial changes in format. The text of each generally adheres to the Allen & Unwin edition extant at the time it is published.
The remarkable and enduring popularity of The Hobbit expresses itself in the collectors' market. The first printing of the first English language edition rarely sells for under $10,000 US dollars in any whole condition, and clean copies in original dust jackets signed by the author are routinely advertised for over $100,000. Online auction site eBay tends to define the market value for those who collect The Hobbit.
The Hobbit has been translated into many languages. Some known languages, with the first date of publishing, are:
- Bulgarian (1975)
- Chinese (Traditional characters) (2001)
- Czech (1973)
- Danish (1969)
- Dutch (1960)
- Esperanto (2000)
- Estonian (1977)
- Finnish (1973)
- French (1969)
- German (1957)
- Greek (1978)
- Hebrew (1976)
- Hungarian (1975)
- Icelandic (1978)
- Indonesian (1977)
- Italian (1973)
- Japanese (1965)
- Norwegian (1972)
- Polish (1960)
- Portuguese (1962)
- Romanian (1975)
- Russian (1976)
- Serbo-Croatian (1975)
- Slovak (1973)
- Spanish (1964)
- Swedish (1947)
- Turkish (1996)
- Ukrainian (1985)
