XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.inklings   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message    
   "Clams Canino"  spoke these staves:   
   >   
   > The bottom kine here, is that "The Hobbit" was so well established   
   > by then, that no wholesale rewrite would have passed muster with   
   > anyome familiar with the original text.  (Human resistance to   
   > change and all that....)   
      
   I am quite sure that you are right.   
      
   And I don't think that Tolkien's own opinion of the book changed at all   
   -- I am sure that he would still have preferred to do the wholesale   
   rewrite, but he accepted as inevitable the situation you describe.   
   Abandoning the 1960 Hobbit and instead limiting himself to the mid-   
   sixties revisions in the third edition /Hobbit/ was, I believe, to   
   Tolkien at most the second-best solution.   
      
   This, however, is very much my own interpretation, and I am sure that   
   others will disagree :)   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
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