Healthy Home Newsletter September 2013 - Volume XVII, Issue 9 | Page 5

The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien
Published September 1937
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, is a fantasy novel and children?s book by JRR Tolkien. Set in a time “between the dawn of faerie and the dominion of men,” The Hobbit follows the quest of home-loving Bilbo Baggins to win a share of the treasure guarded by the dragon, Smaug. It was published on September 21, 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book remains popular and is recognized as a classic children?s book. Bilbo?s journey takes him from light-hearted rural surroundings into deeper, darker territory. The story is told in the form of an episodic quest, and most chapters introduce a specific creature, or type of creature, of Tolkien?s Wilderland. The final chapters deal with the climactic Battle of Five Armies, where many of the characters and creatures from earlier chapters re-emerge to engage in conflict. Critics have cited Tolkien?s own experiences and the themes of other writers who fought in World War 1, along with the author?s professional knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature and personal interest in fairy tales, as the chief influences. Due to the book?s critical and financial success, a sequel was requested by Tolkien?s publishers. As work on The Lord of the Rings progressed, Tolkien made retrospective accommodations for it in one chapter of The Hobbit. These few but significant changes were integrated into the second edition. The work has never been out of print since the paper shortages of the Second World War.

The Great Fire of London 1666

London's Pudding Lane was the starting point of a historic fire almost 350 years ago that famously devastated central London. A bakery belonging to Thomas Farriner caught fire shortly after midnight on September 2,1666 and over the next three days swept through the city, destroying 13,200 homes, 87 churches (including St. Paul's Cathedral) and countless City Authority buildings, leaving 70,000 people newly homeless. London in the 1600's had become an overcrowded collection of narrow, winding cobbled streets, with an alarming number of wooden structures, in spite of the centuries-long prohibition against using such materials for construction (to avoid just such a fire risk). When the fire broke out, the accepted method of battling blazes was to create fire breaks by demolishing strategicallypositioned buildings, thus containing the fire. Due to the mayor's reluctance to give the order to begin demolition, the fire had time to whip itself up into a true firestorm, rendering the fire break method useless. The ultimate death toll is uncertain, since at the time, the deaths of poor and even middle-class citizens were not usually recorded. The overwhelming problems that resulted in the aftermath of the fire did nothing to dissuade the city from rebuilding using the same basic, problematic street plan as before the fire.

Thank You!
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