Here’s something which may brighten a dull Monday. I’ve been pleased to discover a new free ten-hour unabridged audio version of Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Full-cast (one man, young, British) + audio FX + music.
The Hobbit (Audiobook) by Bluefax is not quite up to the vocal standards of master-mimic Phil Dragash, who had earlier accomplished the same thing with an unabridged The Lord of the Rings. But the voicework is very good, it’s a great listen and is overall a fine audiowork and precursor to hearing Dragash’s LoTR.
My understand is that to legally download this you need to first own the retail book and the retail audiobook. Also the soundtrack album for the disappointing and overblown The Hobbit movies. Which is where the music comes from, but be warned that the Hobbit movies are otherwise the worst possible introduction to Middle-earth.
With a good unabridged audiobook to hand for repeated listening, I may now expand my The Cracks of Doom book to a third edition. To encompass the ‘untold tales’ to be found in the cracks of The Hobbit as well as The Lord of the Rings.
There’s a certain amount of horror to be found here, and indeed children’s book reviewers warned of it on publication. I don’t refer to that strange anti-Tolkien phobia, which seems to involve a horror of encountering fey singing elves. Yes, there are singing elves a-plenty. But the central chapters on Mirkwood and its spiders may have some reaching for their Lovecraft, for light relief.
The text used by Bluefax is the modern edition, which subtly aligns the 1937 original of the Gollum sequence with the plot of the 1950s The Lord of the Rings, and also makes other small changes. Such as not having Bilbo briefly note some itinerant hobbits when he and Thorin make their way out of the Shire via Breeland (though the existence of roving hobbits who choose to be itinerant is later revealed in LoTR, when Merry inserts his brief history of Breeland… “Some, doubtless, were no better than tramps, ready to dig a hole in any bank and stay only as long as it suited them.”). Also, in the early drafts of LoTR, ‘Trotter’ (later Strider) was to have been one of these roving hobbits.
Greetings,
I am desperately looking for the audiobook of The Hobbit read by Phil Dragash. Unfortunately, every link I could find seems to be dead. And the audiobook has also been removed from Spotify. Now my hope is that you can provide me with the audiobook. I would love to hear it again. Once you’ve listened to Phil Dragash’s audiobooks, you don’t want to listen to any other reader.
I would therefore be very happy to hear back from you.
Kind regards
Nadia
That’s because Dragash did The Lord of the Rings, not The Hobbit. Bluefax did The Hobbit, but using the same approach as the venerable Dragash. https://archive.org/details/roast-moose If on the other hand you want the Dragash LoTR then you can search Archive.org for dragash soundscape — bear in mind there are several versions, made at different times. There is also a 2024 version with the previously missing departure of Bill the Pony section in it (Phil found it in an overlooked archive), but with lesser later versions of the Maggot / Old Forest / Bree / Strider sections in Fellowship.
My understanding is that to legally download these free fan-works, you need to first own the retail book, soundtrack album and the retail audiobook. Also the soundtrack album for the disappointing and overblown The Hobbit movies. Which is where the music comes from which Blufax used.