What is the subtitle of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit?

The subtitle of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit is There and Back Again. The complete title, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, describes Bilbo Baggins’s movement from his secure home, through the wilderness and the Lonely Mountain, and back to the Shire.

The phrase also resembles the style of a memoir or travel account. In the story, Bilbo eventually writes about his journey, and the title helps frame the adventure as a completed return rather than an open-ended quest. The book’s narrative is more compact and humorous than The Lord of the Rings, although it introduces places, peoples, and objects that later become important to Tolkien’s wider mythology.

The subtitle is not the name of a separate sequel. It belongs to the original 1937 novel and is often omitted in ordinary references to the book. Tolkien also used related travel and return ideas elsewhere, including the poem “The Road Goes Ever On,” but that is a different work.