Majesty & Mystery: Maurice Sendak’s Illustration of 'The Hobbit'
My favorite book is 'The Hobbit.' My favorite illustrated children’s book is 'Where the Wild Things Are.' So, when I recently came across Maurice Sendak’s lone illustration of ‘The Hobbit,’ I was left both thrilled and wishing that there was an entire book of Sendak’s illustrations.
Apparently, there is a mystery surrounding why a Maurice Sendak illustrated version of The Hobbit never came to be. Much can be read about this on the Tolkien web, including a quality rant on tolkienist.com, but here’s the short version:
The illustration seems to have come to light during an exhibit at The Rosenbach museum in Philadelphia on May 6, 2008 called ‘Sendak on Sendak’ where over 300 Sendak pieces were on display, including “rare sketches for unpublished editions of stories such as Tolkien’s The Hobbit.” Sendak had donated the bulk of his work to The Rosenbach in 1968.
A few years later, on March 25, 2011, children’s author and illustrator, Tony DiTerlizzi of The Spiderwick Chronicles, wrote a guest essay in the LA Times, recounting the story behind Sendak’s illustration and his potential involvement in a deluxe edition of The Hobbit for Houghton Mifflin. He learned the story from Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, who had interviewed Sendak in 2004. DiTerlizzi writes that Tolkien:
“…requested samples from Sendak in considering the artist’s involvement. Begrudgingly, Sendak obliged, creating two finished images — one of wood-elves dancing in the moonlight, and another of Bilbo relaxing outside his hobbit hole smoking his pipe beside Gandalf… The editor mislabeled the samples, however, identifying the wood-elves as “hobbits,” as Sendak recalled to Maguire. This blunder nettled Tolkien. His reply was that Sendak had not read the book closely and did not know what a hobbit was. Consequently, Tolkien did not approve the drawings. Sendak was furious.”
DiTerlizzi’s story “dominated geek websites” at the time, and became the accepted narrative of the ill-fated collaboration. But two years later, on August 13, 2013, Tolkien scholar Wayne G. Hammond shed some doubt on DiTerlizzi’s story on his blog, based on correspondence between Tolkien’s UK (George Allen Unwin) and US (Houghton Mifflin) publishers. Hammond writes:
“In regard to the misidentification of the ‘wood-elves’ drawing, the correspondence between Houghton Mifflin and Allen & Unwin in January–February 1967 clearly refers to only one image sent by Austin Olney at Houghton Mifflin, received by Joy Hill at Allen & Unwin, and shown to Tolkien by Rayner Unwin: the picture of Gandalf and Bilbo. Tolkien saw it on 16 February 1967, and on 20 February Rayner wrote to Houghton Mifflin that Tolkien was not ‘wildly happy about the proportions of the figures’, Bilbo being too large relative to Gandalf. There is no indication that Tolkien saw a picture of dancing wood-elves, so any mislabelling ‘blunder’ was of no consequence.”
By both DiTerlizzi’s and Hammond’s accounts, any resolution between Tolkien and Sendak was interrupted by Sendak’s first heart attack in May 1967. But what’s the real reason why the initial sketch was rejected?
After reading DiTerlizzi’s article, I accepted his account intuitively, as the idea of Tolkien being annoyed by an illustration of wood elves labelled as hobbits seemed as certain as gravity. But on reading Hammond’s response, it seems even more plausible that Tolkien would have objected to the proportions between wizards and hobbits in Sendak’s illustration. Sendak’s irreverence for proportion is one of the charming aspects of his art. But Tolkien’s exactitude is part of what makes Middle Earth so special.
Whatever the true story, two things seem clear to me.
One, based on this sketch, Sendak’s Middle Earth would have been fun to see.
Two: SOMEBODY SEARCH THE ROSENBACH FOR THAT WOOD-ELF DRAWING!
