Re:Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit
by riffraff on Monday March 02, 2026 @12:49AM
(#47214301)
But that's only known if you read other material, it's not in The Hobbit.
Re:Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit
by rsynnott on Monday March 02, 2026 @08:41AM
(#47217845)
That's a retcon. There was no indication that he was a hobbit in The Hobbit (and as others have mentioned, in the original there was no physical description at all.)
Re:Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit
by sarchertech on Monday March 02, 2026 @08:51AM
(#47217953)
https://www.theonering.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/The-Ho...
This version says it’s the 1937 edition. It has the pre change story about Gollum offering the ring which Tolkien said is what he changed. But it also says he was a small slimy creature.
Re:Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit
by rawling on Monday March 02, 2026 @09:10AM
(#47218172)
Neither the "before" nor "after" here have "small slimy"
Re:Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit
by sarchertech on Monday March 02, 2026 @09:34AM
(#47218454)
Yeah it's entirely possible the version that I have that is supposed to be from 1937 was tainted with later versions despite it not containing any of the more well known 1951 changes. That is maybe someone reconstructed it by taking a 1966 copy and undoing the changes, but forgot about the small slimy creature change.
But apparently there were dozens of different versions that actually ended up in print that had different amounts of the changes caused by some printers mixing old plates and new. So it's entirely possible that small slimy appeared in some versions around 1951 but not others and that's what that page is working off of.
Well, he was a hobbit once, right? So a 10 meters tall Gollum makes less sense than a Gollum that has about the same size as other hobbits, give or take.