--- title: The Hobbit at 80: What Reviewers Said About Tolkien in 1937 description: After the book was released in September of 1937, some recognized it would become a classic—others, not so much. canonical: https://time.com/4941811/hobbit-anniversary-1937-reviews/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-09-21T13:00:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T17:26:10.457Z article:section: History og:title: 'The Hobbit' Is Turning 80. Here's What Reviewers Said About It in 1937 og:description: Some recognized it would become a classic—others, not so much og:url: https://time.com/4941811/hobbit-anniversary-1937-reviews/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f848371dc3f51e0/6988dde8cf40a8ac3dc49676/tolkien.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: J R R Tolkien og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'The Hobbit' Is Turning 80. Here's What Reviewers Said About It in 1937 twitter:description: Some recognized it would become a classic—others, not so much twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f848371dc3f51e0/6988dde8cf40a8ac3dc49676/tolkien.jpeg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # _The Hobbit_ Is Turning 80\. Here's What Reviewers Said About It in 1937  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 21, 2017 1:00 PM UTC  JRR Tolkien photographed on Dec. 2, 1955 JRR Tolkien photographed on Dec. 2, 1955Haywood Magee—Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Sep 21, 2017 1:00 PM UTC When the first edition of _The Hobbit: or, There And Back Again_ was first published — 80 years ago, on Sept. 21, 1937 — C.S. Lewis [famously](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/11/19/c-s-lewis-reviews-the-hobbit-1937/) called the book a “marvellous” classic-in-the-making, and the New York _Times_ [called](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/03/13/99535839.html?pageNumber=98) it “freshly original and delightfully imaginative.” TIME Magazine, meanwhile, called it…nothing. The book did not receive a review in the magazine’s pages in 1937, nor when the first U.S. edition arrived the following year. That omission, while an obvious oversight in retrospect, is also a telling detail in the history of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first Middle-earth masterpiece. In fact, it took decades for _The Hobbit_ to make the transition from being a well-reviewed children’s book to a work seen as one part of a classic, culture-shaping narrative. One crucial ingredient in making the difference was the release of Tolkien’s later _Lord of the Rings_ books in the 1950s, but even those volumes, while they expanded readership, didn’t finish the work of nudging the books from their genre niche to pop-culture domination. In the 1960s, however, that changed. TIME [documented the phenomenon](http://time.com/vault/issue/1966-07-15/page/70/) in 1966, declaring that hobbits were the new literary heroes on American college campuses. “\[The\] _Rings_ trilogy was first published in the U.S. twelve years ago, had a small but dedicated coterie of admirers, including Poet W. H. Auden and Critic C. S. Lewis, but languished largely unread until it was reprinted last year in two paperback editions,” the story explained. “Since then, campus booksellers have been hard put to keep up with the demand. At the Princeton bookstore, says one salesman, it is the ‘biggest seller since Lord of the Flies.'” Why was it such a hit, besides the more accessible paperback format? Though Tolkien said he hadn’t intended any sort of message for modern readers, the students to whom TIME spoke said that they appreciated the chance to escape from the complicated world of the 1960s to one where you could “cheer the hero and boo the villain.” It was a perfect match between a generation and the precise breed of escapism it demanded. And, though _The Lord of the Rings_ was the story that captivated those college-age readers, it was _The Hobbit_ that became America’s [best-selling mass-market paperback](http://ew.com/article/1992/01/31/jrr-tolkiens-hobbit/) of 1966. By the time Tolkien died in 1973, TIME [noted](http://time.com/vault/issue/1973-09-17/page/129/), his readership had spread from “a handful of literate Anglophiles” to hundreds of thousands of fans across the U.S. and the world. And while the 1960s may have marked a hobbitomania peak, the series has had a resurgence: In 2001, 1.6 million copies of the book [were sold](http://time.com/vault/issue/2001-12-24/page/25/) amid excitement over the coming _Lord of the Rings_ movies, at the time the most of any year since it was first published. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4941811/hobbit-anniversary-1937-reviews/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4941811/hobbit-anniversary-1937-reviews/"},"headline":"The Hobbit Is Turning 80. 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