J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit mainly begins in the fictional region called the Shire.
The Shire is the homeland of the Hobbits and the starting point for Bilbo Baggins’s adventure. It is a peaceful, fertile land in the northwest of Middle-earth, known for villages, farms, hedgerows, and Hobbit communities. Bilbo leaves his comfortable home there when Gandalf and the Dwarves recruit him for their journey.
The Shire also provides the emotional center of The Lord of the Rings. Frodo, Samwise Gamgee, Merry, and Pippin begin there, and the story eventually returns to the consequences of the wider conflict within the Shire itself.
The Shire is not the same as Middle-earth: it is one region within that larger continent. Gondor, Rohan, and Mordor are distant lands that become important later in the narrative.