What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published fantasy story for children?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published fantasy story for children was The Hobbit.

The Hobbit appeared in 1937 and introduced readers to Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit drawn into a quest involving Dwarves, a dragon, and the Lonely Mountain. Tolkien developed the story from ideas he had been telling and writing for his children, but its publication brought his invented mythology to a much wider audience.

The book was not Tolkien’s first creative work or first publication. He had already written scholarship, poetry, and private mythological stories, and he later published other shorter fantasies. The distinction is that The Hobbit was his first major fantasy book published for children and his first widely successful work of imaginative fiction.

Its success led publisher George Allen & Unwin to request a sequel. That sequel became The Lord of the Rings, which grew into a much larger and more serious work. The Hobbit therefore stands at the beginning of Tolkien’s public career as a fantasy novelist.