The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, illustrated by Tove Jansson
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The Hobbit
By JRR Tolkien
Illustrated by Tove Jansson
William Morrow 2026
From a publishing point of view, just as from a normal-human point of view, the main problem with JRR Tolkien is he eventually stopped writing and died. Every jot and comma of his writing has been published and re-published; every piece of his work, major and minor, has been packaged and re-packaged. The challenge becomes one of sheer inventiveness: after all this time, how do present the old familiar masterpieces in new and interesting ways, in order both to entice new readers and titillate the collector impulses of old fans. Some of these efforts will be misfires, obviously, but others will be genuinely fascinating.
Firmly in the ‘fascinating’ camp in 2026, on the eve of 2027’s 90th anniversary of the book’s appearance, comes a new edition of Tolkien’s beloved 1937 children’s classic The Hobbit, with illustrations by Tove Jansson, the genius artist of the Moomin books. She was commissioned to illustrate Tolkien’s book in 1960, went at the job with her usual fervid obsession, and saw the finished results in 1962 when the Swedish-language Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr appeared. The Jansson-illustrated Hobbit has never appeared in the English-language market before, so this hefty pink-and-blue edition, with its heavy stock paper and its full-color end papers and its cloth bookmark marks a publishing event that should please every Tolkien fan.
The publisher’s presentation of the book is downright odd. It arrives like an orphan in wicker basket, without so much as a word pinned to its blanket. There’s no Introduction, no details of Jansson’s life or work for readers who might not know the story, no context of any kind except a seven-line two-sentence bit of business printed on the back. The story of the Swedish Hobbit isn’t given here. The translator of Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr isn’t even named, much less detailed (or even interviewed, if that translator hasn’t moved on to the halls of Mandos). And perhaps the most intriguing lost opportunity of all: this is simply the text of The Hobbit, not a new English-language translation of the Swedish translation. Ten years ago, for instance, Overlook brought out an English-language translation of the Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula; they called it Powers of Darkness, and it was as fascinating for its eccentricities as for its loyalties to the original. Did Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr have the same kind of eccentricities? Might this sturdy pink-and-blue volume have been called Bilbo and read teasingly different from the book readers know and love?
There’s none of that here. Like an unexpected party, it just shows up and raps on the door. There’s an odd-looking little fellow on the cover, carrying a shield and halberd but wearing a nightcap, and there’s a dragon flying over jagged mountains, and the interior illustrations are likewise full of surprises, including, famously, a Gollum who towers over Bilbo Baggins.
But it’s just that and nothing more. Tove Jansson gave interviews about her experience illustrating The Hobbit; they could have been translated and included here. Her editor, a Tolkien enthusiast, likewise wrote about the process of producing Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr; she’s not included here. That Swedish edition’s odd and ambling series of post-publication adventures make interesting reading and could have been written up here – a dozen Tolkien fans would have been happy to do such basic contextualizing for free if Harper Collins decided to get stingy.
At least it’s here, and it’s pretty. It’s a terrible lost opportunity on many fronts, but it’s here, and it’s pretty.
Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He has written regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News