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Originally Posted by Aiwendil
I'm not sure I agree. Certainly they are not quite as good as the final version, and certainly if one inserted them into the finished version of LotR, one would have far inferior product. But in their own way I think they are not so bad. If LotR had turned out to be simply a sequel to The Hobbit, in more or less its style and on its scale, they might not have worked too badly. What I think these early drafts really show is how long it took Tolkien to figure out what sort of a book it was he was writing.
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Ok then, I'll give some of the hobbit's conversation, & we can vote on the quality, & whether we would have had a bestseller on our hands:
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'Fancy climbing upstairs to bed!' said Odo. 'That seems to me most inconvenient. Hobbits aren't birds.'
'I don't know.' said Bingo. 'It isn't as bad as it sounds; though personally I never like looking out of upstairs windows, it makes me a bit giddy. There are some houses that have three stages, bedrooms above bedrooms. I slept in one once long ago on a holiday; the wind kept me awake all night.'
'What a nuisance, if you want a handkerchief or something when you are downstairs, & find it is upstairs,' said Odo.
'You could keep handkerchiefs downstairs, if you wished', said Frodo.
'You could, but I don't believe anybody does.'
'That is not the houses' fault,' said Bingo, 'it is just the silliness of the hobbits that live in them.
(Long paragraph on the Elf Towers)
'If I ever live in a house, I shall keep everything I want downstairs, & only go up when I don't want anything' or perhaps I shall have a cold supper upstairs in the dark on a starry night.'
'And have to carry plates & things downstairs, if you don't fall all the way down,' laughed Odo.
'No!' said Bingo. 'I shall have wooden plates & bowls, & throw them out of the window. There will be thick grass all round my house.'
But you would still have to carry your supper upstairs.' said Odo.
'O well then, perhaps I should not have supper upstairs,' said Bingo. 'It was only just an idea.'
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The 'farce' as Christopher calls it, of the events in Maggot's house, have to be read in full to be truly appreciated.
Sorry, but to me this rubbish is infinitely inferior to even the most twee stuff in the Hobbit.