Valinor was where the gods, or Valar, of Middle-Earth dwelt; it lay far over the western sea. In the age of The Silmarillion, there were comings and goings to it all the time (by the standards of elves that is) but by the LOTR, it was only a legend to mortals. This illustration by Michael …
As I mentioned in Part 1, Tolkien described orcs in racially stereotyped terms, in fact, he even admitted to it: ” squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.” The above illustration by Tim Kirk, then a fan artist, adheres …
Whenever I do a deep dive on a subject I always discover things I never knew before. Like this ink drawing of Bilbo and Gandalf that children’s book author Maurice Sendak did! The year was 1967 and it was made during a period Sendak was illustrating others’ work but not writing his own. One could …
In coming to the end of this series, I’ll look at editions of The Hobbit that were published in former Eastern Bloc countries. In Part 2 of this series I speculated that the Russian translation may have used for an early Polish edition instead of Tolkien’s original English language one, hence the all-over hairy feet. …
In this post I’ll be looking at some Russian / Slavic hobbit illustrations I found that were not published, at least not in a book, as far as I know. This sweet pic depicts, I think, Gandalf and Bilbo after their adventure sharing a quiet moment together, or perhaps some ho-yay?** Gandalf is not wearing …
Yet more strange creatures sprung from the minds of Russian artists with views of hobbits unadulterated by the West. Take the one above. The hobbit is hard to see, but he’s at midcenter left, holding a sword, apparently miniaturized as he fights the spiders, who should be giant spiders. (The same scene is depicted ina …
After The Hobbit was published in the Soviet Union in 1976 the same translation was used for subsequent editions. The artists again featured those same furry feet and legs for Bilbo Baggins. Like the creature above who looks far from human-like with his claws, donkey ears, and misshapen face. Well, it’s an honest attempt at …
As I said in my last post, the first edition of The Hobbit was published in the Soviet Union in 1976 as a hardback children’s book. Translation was by Natalia Rakhmanova with illustrations by artist Mikhail Belomlinsky. Notice anything different about Bilbo? That’s right, his entire legs are hairy, not just his feet. That’s because …
He’s trimming his nose hairs, apparently.
In the previous two posts of this series I’ve concentrated on the lighthearted (back then) wink-wink smirk-smirk types of covers that sold “adult” — or those that were marketed as adult, even if they were rather tame — SFF novels. Though these might be considered sexist today, there was a humor to them, an idea …