Oxonmoot 2024

This paper explores Tolkien’s illustrations for the first edition of The Hobbit, arguing that their graphic language derives significantly from author-illustrator Hugh Lofting (creator of the Doctor Dolittle series) and, by extension, from early twentieth-century topographical and geological representation. Lofting’s training as a civil engineer manifests in his illustrations through a highly rigid, systematic approach to line as a means of creating both contours and textures. These conventions also appear in the army training manuals that both Lofting and Tolkien encountered in the First World War. Neither Lofting nor Tolkien mobilized topographical rendering as a means of signifying their associated materials; for instance, both use the pattern for schist when depicting water. Nonetheless, the economical, structured use of line in both artists’ work demonstrates a creative appropriation of these conventions, which are used in distinct ways by each artist.