etween 1932 and 1953, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, of Oxford, England, translated four volumes compiled by the renowned Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, written during the Third Age of Middle Earth, far longer ago than the Celtic, Germanic and Icelandic manuscripts Professor Tolkien was used to deciphering. The result wasThe Hobbit, and readers have never beenthe same since. In 1954, seventeen years after The Hobbit first appeared,...