Since the publication of The Hobbit in 1937, critical readers have argued over whether the book is a fantasy, a fairy tale, a fable, a romance, an epic, or a novel. Classifying the book is one way of explaining its strengths and weaknesses and understanding the immense appeal it has held for many decades. The Hobbit seems to be about much more than its surface narrative, but Tolkien was adamant that it was not an allegory and said he much preferred history, whether real or invented, to allegory. The book is not a novel in the tradition of the great realistic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; it is much closer to the idea of a romance, a genre that accommodates the improbable and even the supernatural. It is probably most accurate to call it a fantasy and to think of it as an invented history that includes the inexplicable.
In many ways, the book is simplistic, and yet in others, it reflects the complexity of human experience. Its simplicity is reflected in the essentially rural nature of the setting. Except for Lake-town and the ruins of Dale, there are no cities and no real industry. Even in the days when the dwarves thrived in Dale, their business was craft rather than industry in its modern, technological sense. The story takes place long ago, in an unspecified time, although the year is marked by the months of the Julian calendar and Yule-tide is observed. Bilbo smokes a pipe and serves coffee and tea, as well as English treats like seedcake, scones, and mince pies, and yet he is a hobbit who lives in a hole in the ground, is a traveling companion to dwarves, and meets Goblins, elves, and a dragon on a journey over a landscape that is not recognizably English at all.
