Sendak’s Sample Artwork for ‘The Hobbit’

Originally published by Evie on Middle-earth News on 9 June 2014.

Maurice Sendak is well known as the author and illustrator of the beloved children’s book Where the Wild Things Are but did you know he was once put forward to do the artwork for the 30th-anniversary deluxe illustrated edition of The Hobbit?

According to Open Culture, Sendak produced two sample illustrations, one of wood-elves dancing in the moonlight and one of Bilbo Baggins with Gandalf outside Bag End. Only the drawing on Bilbo and Gandalf survives today (pictured below).

Events then seemed to conspire against the project. The LA Times tells that the editor prepared Sendak’s illustrations for Tolkien’s approval but mislabelled the wood-elves as hobbits. Tolkien felt Sendak hadn’t read the book closely enough and didn’t understand what a hobbit was, so Tolkien would not approve the drawings. Sendak was angered by this. In an attempt to smooth things out between the two, a meeting was arranged in Oxford for when Sendak was touring England with Where the Wild Things Are. Sadly, the day before the meeting, Sendak suffered his first major heart attack. As a result, Sendak never met Tolkien and the project was shelved.

I’d have loved to have seen Sendak’s vision of The Hobbit. Wouldn’t you?

Maurice Sendak’s “The Hobbit,” in pen and ink, 1967 (Credit: Maurice Sendak/Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University) via Open Culture