Tolkien’s Hobbit drawings published to mark 75th anniversary

The Art of the Hobbit reveals Tolkien's visual imagination through 100 works. Photograph: JRR Tolkien, courtesy of the Tolkien estate/HarperCollins

Extensive collection of illustrations and paintings show fantasy author was an accomplished artist.

By Alison Flood

A swath of JRR Tolkien’s original illustrations for The Hobbit are to be published for the first time this week as part of celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of the book’s publication.

The published version of The Hobbit includes around 20 illustrations by its author, as well as the well-known dust jacket painting of the mountains which Bilbo Baggins passes through on his adventures. But when HarperCollins began preparing for the book’s 75th anniversary next year, the publisher discovered Tolkien had actually created more than 100 illustrations, which lay buried in his archive at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and were only recently digitised.

“That was a surprise. I thought there might be 40-50 in total,” said publisher David Brawn. “But there are 110 Hobbit pictures, about two dozen of which haven’t been published before.”

Ranging from line drawings in ink to watercolours and sketches, the collected drawings will be published on 27 October as The Art of the Hobbit. HarperCollins hopes the collection and the anniversary will shed new light on the fantasy author – and on his first novel.

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A life in writing: Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett … AS Byatt is a fan, calling him 'a great storyteller, and splendidly inventive with the English language'. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian

‘I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet’.

By Alison Flood

Terry Pratchett is having a statue made. It’s a statue of a goddess, and he thinks she ought probably to be smoking a cigarette, and to be showing one breast. “There should be an urn, too. If there’s an urn it’s not porn – that’s a Discworld cliché,” he says, a bubble of laughter in his voice.

The goddess is one of Pratchett’s own invention: Narrativia, the deity of narrative who smiles on writers (and perhaps especially sunnily on her creator). Discworld, created by Pratchett 28 years ago, is the fantasy world held up by four elephants balanced on the back of a giant turtle. It’s a concept which started out as an affectionate lampoon of the sword-and-sorcery fantasy genre, but it has, over the years, become an increasingly sophisticated swipe at contemporary society, pointing out the ridiculousness of everything from Hollywood to the postal service, newspapers, banks and football.

And Narrativia has been beside him all the way. “If you’ve been a good boy and worked at what you’re doing, then the goddess Narrativia will smile on you,” he says, recounting his delight at a particular piece of her work, when he was writing Thief of Time more than a decade ago. He decided to call one of his characters Ronnie Soak. Soak is the fifth horseman of the apocalypse – the one who left before they got famous. His name was picked at random, so Pratchett was astonished when he noticed what it sounded like backwards. Suddenly, he knew of what this particular horseman would be a harbinger. “I thought chaos – yes! Chaos, the oldest,” he says. “Stuff just turns up like that.”

In typically ebullient fashion, Thief of Time also contains a sprinkling of yetis, a clock which will stop time and the Monks of History, whose job it is to manage time, moving it from where it isn’t needed (underwater) to where it is (cities). AS Byattsaid on the book’s publication that it should have been nominated for the Booker prize. But it was a fantasy novel; it was funny; it was a bestseller. Unsurprisingly enough, it wasn’t.And despite Pratchett’s immense popularity (75 million copies sold of his 67 books), it took a while for the literary establishment to notice – apart from Byatt.

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Chick-lit may be staggering on its heels, but it will survive

What would Bridget Jones say about the supposed demise of chick-lit?

Sophie Hannah, Dawn French, Sophie Kinsella, Kate Atkinson, Philippa Gregory and Kathy Reichs prove that female authors are as influential as ever.

By Jojo Moyes

So chick-lit is dead, ground to dust under its own glittery, pink stiletto heel. Over the past week, the falling sales of various female authors – Marian Keyes, Veronica Henry, Jodi Picoult – have been trotted out to declare that the day of the pink-covered paperback is finally over.

Oh, arse, as Bridget Jones might say. Let’s ignore the fact that chick-lit has apparently repaired to its deathbed every year for the past decade. And that fiction in general is down 10 per cent. According to the latest reports, only sales of science fiction and fantasy are up, propelled by George R R Martin’s acclaimed A Game of Thrones.

And let’s put aside the fact that most chick-lit authors still sell more than the entire Booker shortlist put together. For those shifting 100,000 units a week, a dip of 20 per cent in sales is painful, yes. But it’s not as painful as shifting 1,500 copies during an entire shelf life, as do many “literary” offerings.

But the sales picture is more complex than the headline figures suggest. David Shelley, publisher of Little, Brown, recently told The Bookseller that digital books now account for a “disproportionate number” of sales of women’s fiction, but are not yet recorded. Sales of Jenny Colgan’s novel, Meet Me at the Cupcake Café, are up almost 40 per cent, thanks to e-books.

“Digital downloads have been really successful with young women’s fiction,” says Colgan. “A lot of chick-lit readers are tech-savvy, and they read a lot,” she says.

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Interview with Jo Fletcher

Jo Fletcher

by bookmonkey

The lovely Jo Fletcher, of new Quercus imprint Jo Fletcher Books, took the time to answer my questions on setting up her new sci-fi and fantasy imprint and the books due to be released. She also talks about her previous work for Gollancz and her favourite books and authors who have helped create her passion and knowledge for this exciting genre. So if you love science fiction and fantasy or you have an interest in the world of publishing then read on…

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