[jallanite]

What Allen & Unwin was obviously looking for was a series of books as much as possible exactly like The Hobbit. L. Frank Baum had done this with his Oz books, followed by Ruth Plumly Thompson. Hugh Lofting had done this with his character Doctor Dolittle. Walter R. Brooks had done this with Freddy the Pig. P. J. Travers had already written two books about Mary Poppins with more to come.

So why couldn’t Tolkien just dash off a Hobbit book every couple of years at least? Allen & Unwin were hoping for something like:

1. The Hobbit and Gandalf
2. The Hobbit and the Treasure of Moria
3. The Hobbit and the Stone Giants
4. The Hobbit Visits England
5. The Hobbit and Hobbita
6. The Son of the Hobbit
7. The Daughter of the Hobbit
8. The Hobbit Family and the Martians
9. The Hobbit Family and the Bobbsey Twins Visit Gormenghast.
   

… and so on, and so on, and so on.

Unfortunately Tolkien had written himself into a corner when he wrote “… he [Bilbo] remained very happy to the end of his days” which seemed to mean Bilbo had no further adventures involving personal danger, or at least very few. Apparently no money would persuade Tolkien to slightly alter the ending or just ignore it.

Of course Tolkien could have written tales similar to The Hobbit set in the same world:

1. Gandalf and the Hot-Air Balloon
2. Dain and the Orkish Invasion
3. A Mirror in Mirkwood
4. Treebeard
5. Lúthien
6. The Journey of Eärendil
7. The Son of the Hobbit and the Daleks
8. Legolas at the Earth’s Core
9. The Hobbit Family and the Bobbsey Twins Visit Gormenghast.

… and so on, and so on, and so on.

Instead Tolkien did something simpler. Bilbo was a little old to get married and have descendants (though Tolkien did try that out for a bit) but Tolkien eventually decided that perhaps if The Son of the Hobbit would not work well then he could instead settle on The First and Second Cousin, Once Removed, of the Hobbit (and the Cousin’s Friends).

If a book starring one hobbit had been so very successful, then one with four hobbits ought to win every prize going. For further assurance Tolkien would even model one of the hobbits on Walt Disney’s Goofy whom he obviously admired.

The book following that would perhaps be Elbereth and the Seven Hobbits.

That still didn’t work out as Tolkien expected. As Tolkien wrote in letter 19 to Sir Stanley Unwin:

I think it is plain that quite apart from it, a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called for. I promise to give this thought and attention. But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils are in my heart. So that goodness knows what will happen.

Sir Stanley Unwin probably didn’t sympathize in the slightest. But what did happen? Tolkien had decided that the chatty persona he had adopted as author of The Hobbit was patronizing and offensive to intelligent children and that history showed there was no logical reason why fairy stories should not be now appreciated by adults if written for adults, as they were in days past.

Tolkien would write something more like E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ourobouros which had at least achieved some critical success and which Tolkien liked.

From the hindrance of other events and from Tolkien’s own care in writing the book was only finished, more-or-less, twelve years later. The protagonist would end up physically fine, save for the loss of a finger, but psychically suffer from what is now clinically called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Frodo had to be put away to Eressëa. Not a nice picture to present to the cannon-fodder of the future.

The first chapter is in some ways more like The Hobbit. But the clear picture of Hobbiton and its inhabitants is otherwise quite unlike The Hobbit. It is more like George Eliot’s Middlemarch done as a comedy for kiddies.

The protagonist Frodo is like Bilbo, one of the idle rich who probably never did a bit of work in his life up till now and mostly pals around with similar idle rich, mostly being idle and walking and eating. Tolkien has realized that rich playboys make the best heroes as they can be good and don’t have the pressure of having to work day-to-day. If you are extraordinarily wealthy but still good presumably you will be really exceptionally good if circumstances require.

Otho Sackville-Baggins is the other kind of idle rich, rotten to the core. He even says, “Foiled again!” Some reviewers apparently missed him altogether. They claimed only Sauron and his horde were presented as evil and nowhere did Tolkien explain why they were evil. Apparently they only skimmed the chapter “The Shadow of the Past” where Tolkien first tells some of the story of Sauron in this book.

That The Lord of the Rings begins more in the style of The Hobbit fits as it is a bridge from The Hobbit to the new book. But the Prologue makes clear that this book will have much more background depth than Tolkien’s earlier hobbit book and even sort of explains pipe tobacco in Europe before Christopher Columus. The first chapter begins to fulfill this promise. But Tolkien carelessly neglects to explain Númenor and the Dúnedain until one mention in the third volume and Appendix A I (i).

Tolkien, from his mentions, made sure that Sir Stanley Unwin would accept The Silmarillion as a sequel (prequel really) this time, if the The Lord of the Rings was a success. Tolkien had sent The Silmarillion to Allen & Unwin once and when they didn’t want it almost got another publisher to take it along with The Lord of the Rings. Now, as his Niggle desired, the publishers and readers were screaming for his uncompleted work.

Like Niggle, Tolkien died before his Silmarillion was finished, about seventeen years later, but mostly not working on his supposedly great work. Tolkien’s story Leaf by Niggle was very much not an allegory.