Which publishing house released J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1937?

George Allen & Unwin released J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in 1937.

The London publishing house accepted the manuscript after Stanley Unwin’s son Rayner read it and gave a favorable report. The book appeared on 21 September 1937 under the title The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. Its success encouraged the publisher to ask Tolkien for a sequel.

That sequel became The Lord of the Rings, a much longer and more serious work than the publisher initially expected. George Allen & Unwin published the three volumes between 1954 and 1955. The company later became Allen & Unwin, and it was eventually acquired by HarperCollins. Readers sometimes identify Houghton Mifflin as The Hobbit’s publisher because the American edition was issued through Houghton Mifflin, but the original British publication was by George Allen & Unwin.