The Hobbit - Chapter 01 - An Unexpected Party

[Raynor]

Originally Posted by davem

The reason I wouldn't include it in the Legendarium is that it was not written to be part of it, it was written a an entertainment for his children first & foremost - that doesn't make a 'children's' story, it merely means it was written in what Tolkien thought was a style they would like.

I believe it is a children story which became part of the legendarium :

Originally Posted by Letter #25

My tale is not consciously based on any other book - save one, and that is unpublished: the 'Silmarillion', a history of the Elves, to which frequent allusion is made.

Originally Posted by Letter #163

The Hobbit was originally quite unconnected, though it inevitably got drawn in to the circumference of the greater construction; and in the event modified it. It was unhappily really meant, as far as I was conscious, as a 'children's story', and as I had not learned sense then, and my children were not quite old enough to correct me, it has some of the sillinesses of manner caught unthinkingly from the kind of stuff I had had served to me, as Chaucer may catch a minstrel tag.