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 …
Russia loves Tolkien. The first officially translated edition of The Hobbit was released there in 1976 and has stayed in print there ever since (note: Tolkien’s works circulated there unofficially for years in samizdat) and not only that, it was Russia that attempted the first live-action movies of both The Hobbit and the The Lord …
The Product by Marina Fontaine Conservatarian Press, 2022 [ #23 After the fall: A post-apocalyptic or dystopic book. ] This book kept popping up in my Kindle feed, so I chose it for the “Dystopia” category of this year’s challenge. It occurred to me when writing this review that “Russian Dystopia” is perhaps a subset, …
In looking up foreign editions of the Chronicles I came across some unique editions that were published in Russia and Ukraine. You can consider this post a companion to The Return of the White Witch: Russian Edition. The three books above, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, and The …
My Summers of Narnia seem to be settling around a certain theme. Last year it was The Silver Chair; this year, it’s the book that started it all, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. And with that theme, some more White Witches I found, not explicitly marked as The White Witch of course, but …
Three highly stylized scenes from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, done in a style that, to my mind, imitates the Ballets Russes sketches of designer Leon Bakst. (I’ll be going more into the Russian influence on depictions of Narnia later in the Summer.) The first seems to show Lucy in the woods with …