What subtitle was printed on the first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit?

The first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit carried the subtitle There and Back Again.

The subtitle describes Bilbo Baggins’s journey from his home in Hobbiton to the Lonely Mountain and back again. Bilbo begins as a reluctant participant in Thorin Oakenshield’s expedition and eventually returns to the Shire changed by his experiences.

There and Back Again also appears as the title of Bilbo’s written account of his travels. Within Tolkien’s wider fictional history, Bilbo authors a memoir describing the expedition, making the subtitle part of the imagined publication history as well as a summary of the plot.

Some modern film marketing made “An Unexpected Journey” especially familiar, but that phrase is not the original subtitle of Tolkien’s novel. It is the title of the first film in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy.