2012 marks the 75th anniversary of The Hobbit, plus the first of three Hobbit movies is coming out this year…but what does this have to do with C.S. Lewis?

As you may know, J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis were colleagues and friends at Oxford University. You might not be aware that five years before The Hobbit was published in 1937 Lewis had read an unfinished draft of the now famous work.

In fact, Lewis strongly encouraged Tolkien to get the book publish and have a wider readership than just his own children. Lewis loved his friend’s work so much that in a review printed a month after the book was released, he stated “The Hobbit may well prove a classic.” He certainly got that right!