Para conmemorar el 75 aniversario de la primera publicación de El Hobbit, todo el material ilustrado creado por Tolkien para su historia ha sido reunido en este libro que contiene más de cien bocetos, dibujos, pinturas, mapas y planos; tanto versiones preliminares y alternativas, como material artístico acabado. Algunas de las ilustraciones de este volumen permanecían totalmente inéditas, mientras que otras se publican por primera vez a color.

Las ilustraciones de Tolkien para El Hobbit parecen más vivas que nunca gracias a los nuevos escaneados digitales de las bibliotecas Bodleian de Oxford y de la Universidad Marquette de Wisconsin.

Cuando J. R. R. Tolkien escribió El Hobbit ya era un hábil artista amateur, y realizó varias ilustraciones durante el proceso de escritura de su libro.

La primera edición de El Hobbit incluía diez ilustraciones en blanco y negro, dos mapas y una cubierta y sobrecubierta diseñadas por su autor. Más tarde, Tolkien también pintó cinco escenas a color que están consideradas entre sus mejores trabajos. Sus ilustraciones para El Hobbit resultan un valor añadido de este inolvidable libro, y han influido a los lectores de varias generaciones en el modo de imaginar a Bilbo Bolsón y su mundo.

Helps to show the development of Tolkien’s writing of The Hobbit and is rather wonderful really. I reread The Hobbit whilst reading this and it added enormously to the appreciation. ( )

Collecintg Tolkien's artwork from the Hobbit makes for a great (if limited) collection, but I found this book to be quite underwhelming. The prose that discussed the various sketches and techniques that Tolkien used to build towards a finished piece was so dry that I found myself zoning out continually while reading. The distraction was not helped at all by the slightly jumbled page layout, which often separated text from image and sent my eyes wandering for described images that were pages back or ahead. Clearly they did not take as much care in the design of this book as Tolkien did for the original publication of the Hobbit... ( )

This book features all the illustrations Tolkien has ever done of The Hobbit - from just mere scribbles and sketches to the colorful and fully developed pictures that were published in the finished work in the first British and American editions and later on. In the book, we follow the journey from Hobbiton to the Lonely Mountain and back, each chapter devoted to a place in the story and the pictures Tolkien drew and painted of that place. The last chapters are reserved for binding designs and the dust jacket, and a specific one on portraits of Bilbo. There are 106 pictures in total, many of them printed on a full page, and each and everyone is explained, details are pointed out and references to other pictures and Tolkien's sources are given. It is a wonderful guide because I surely would have missed many details or specific aspects of interest without that information. I am a bit ambivalent on Tolkien's pictures themselves - there are some I absolutely love (prints of a few of them adore my living room), but some I don't really care for because the style is not one I prefer. These are specifically the very stylized ones, probably because I first saw Alan Lee's and John Howe's pictures, and I'll always imagine Middle-earth like that. However, I am just utterly impressed by Tolkien's ability not only to be a writer, a professor of medieval literature and languages, AND a painter, too. Although he always sold himself short, I think the pictures show great talent. Like his writing, they are painstakingly done, full of details and often done several times over until Tolkien was content. Thus, there are sometimes nearly a dozen pictures of the same scene or place.
Moreover, you can learn a lot about the book industry and printing in the 1930s - it is amazing to read how Tolkien had to bargain for an additional color in a painting because that was so expensive. Most pictures were just black and white, others with one or two additional colors, and just the most important had more. Very often, his artistic ideas had to be put back due to costs.
I just loved this book and savored every page - and painting - of it. I think it is a great read for everyone who loves The Hobbit and wants to know more about its history, and for people interested in illustrations or bookish history in general. ( )

In The Art of The Hobbit, editors Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull compile all of the artwork J.R.R. Tolkien created while writing the various drafts of The Hobbit prior to George Allen & Unwin’s interest in it and then as potential illustrations for the published product. Hammond and Scull arrange the illustrations in the order of their subject within The Hobbit followed by chronologically by subject so that readers may see how Tolkien altered each over time. Using both Tolkien’s notes, correspondence between he and his publisher, and later letters, Hammond and Scull discuss Tolkien’s inspirations – including historical architecture, his own trip to the Alps, and illustrated books with which he would be familiar – as well as the reason he altered illustrations over time, either due to his own frustration with getting the material just right or due to limitations in the reproduction process. This, like Hammond and Scull’s The Art of the Lord of the Rings, offers an invaluable look into the ideas that never made it into the final version of Tolkien’s legendarium and is a must-read for fans of Middle Earth. ( )