The Hobbit was published on this day in 1937. It is a book I treasure, and not one of the world’s great books.

It was 1937, an age away, when JRR Tolkien’s book was first released. There are people alive who remember that year, but not many. The Hobbit was published by George Allen & Unwin after Stanley Unwin commissioned a review of the typescript (standard fee, one shilling) from his ten-year-old son, Rayner.

When he reviewed The Hobbit, CS Lewis said it was a children’s book “only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery.”

When he reviewed The Hobbit, CS Lewis said it was a children’s book “only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery.”

“Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit,” it read, complete with a ten-year-old’s errors, “who lived in his hobbit-hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his dwarves perswaded him to go. He had a very exiting time fighting goblins…This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of five and nine.”

I was that age when I first encountered it, and it was the book that taught me to read. I had no difficulty with letters or with words, but it was the novel that first........

© The Spectator