Until I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings, my favorite book grow­ing up was, by far, The Hob­bit. Grow­ing up in Rus­sia, how­ev­er, meant that instead of Tolkien’s Eng­lish ver­sion, my par­ents read me a Russ­ian trans­la­tion. To me, the trans­la­tion eas­i­ly matched the pace and won­der of Tolkien’s orig­i­nal. Look­ing back, The Hob­bit prob­a­bly made such an indeli­ble impres­sion on me because Tolkien’s tale was alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent than the Russ­ian fairy tales and children’s sto­ries that I had pre­vi­ous­ly been exposed to. There were no child­ish hijinks, no young pro­tag­o­nists, no par­ents to res­cue you when you got into trou­ble. I con­sid­ered it an epic in the truest lit­er­ary sense.

As with many Russ­ian trans­la­tions dur­ing the Cold War, the book came with a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent set of illus­tra­tions. Mine, I remem­ber regret­ting slight­ly, lacked pic­tures alto­geth­er. A friend’s edi­tion, how­ev­er, was illus­trat­ed in the typ­i­cal Russ­ian style: much more tra­di­tion­al­ly styl­ized than Tolkien’s own draw­ings, they were more angu­lar, friend­lier, almost car­toon­ish.

In this post, we include a num­ber of these images from the 1976 print­ing. The cov­er, above, depicts a grin­ning Bil­bo Bag­gins hold­ing a gem. Below, Gan­dalf, an osten­si­bly harm­less soul, pays Bil­bo a vis­it.

Next, we have the three trolls, argu­ing about their var­i­ous eat­ing arrange­ments, with Bil­bo hid­ing to the side.

Here, Gol­lum, née Smeagol, pad­dles his raft in the depths of the moun­tains.

Final­ly, here’s Bil­bo, ful­fill­ing his role as a bur­glar in Smaug’s lair.

For more of the Sovi­et illus­tra­tions of The Hob­bit, head on over to Mash­able.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March, 2015

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhib­it in Gen­er­a­tions Is Com­ing to the U.S.: Orig­i­nal Draw­ings, Man­u­scripts, Maps & More

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read from The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit in Vin­tage Record­ings from the Ear­ly 1950s

Down­load a Free Course on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

Hunter S. Thomp­son and Ray Brad­bury would at first seem to have lit­tle in com­mon, oth­er than hav­ing made their liv­ings by the pen. Or rather, both of them hav­ing devel­oped as writ­ers in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry, by the typewriter–though Thomp­son famous­ly shot his and a young Brad­bury once had to rent one for ten cents per hour at UCLA’s library. In one nine-day rental in the ear­ly 1950s, Brad­bury typed up Fahren­heit 451, still his best-known work and one whose cen­tral idea, that of a future soci­ety that method­i­cal­ly destroys all books, has stayed com­pelling almost 65 years after its first pub­li­ca­tion.

Thomp­son’s best-known work, 1971’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, deals in dif­fer­ent kinds of fright­en­ing visions, some of them brought to illus­trat­ed life by the Eng­lish artist Ralph Stead­man. Thir­ty years lat­er years lat­er and with his name long since made by his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Thomp­son, Stead­man would bring his tal­ents to Brad­bury’s dystopia. Brain Pick­ings’ Maria Popo­va quotes him describ­ing the theme of Fahren­heit 451 as “vital­ly impor­tant.” Accord­ing to Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Paul Gal­lagher, when Brad­bury saw Stead­man’s illus­tra­tions, com­mis­sioned for a lim­it­ed edi­tion of the book around its fifti­eth anniver­sary, he said to the artist, “You’ve brought my book into the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

Stead­man repaid the com­pli­ment when he said that he con­sid­ers Fahren­heit 451 “as impor­tant as 1984 and Ani­mal Farm as real pow­er­ful social com­ment,” and he should know, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly poured his artis­tic ener­gies into a 1995 edi­tion of George Orwell’s decep­tive­ly sim­ple alle­go­ry of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and its con­se­quences. More than a few of us would no doubt love to see what Stead­man could do with 1984 here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, a time when we’ve hard­ly extin­guished the soci­etal dan­gers of which Orwell, or Brad­bury, or indeed Thomp­son, tried, each in his dis­tinc­tive lit­er­ary way, to warn us. Book-burn­ing may remain a fringe pur­suit, but the fight against thought con­trol in its infi­nite forms demands con­stant vig­i­lance — and no small amount of imag­i­na­tion.

You can see more illus­tra­tions of Fahren­heit 451 at Brain Pick­ings and Dan­ger­ous Minds. Also, you can pur­chase used copies of the lim­it­ed print edi­tion online, though they seem quite rare at this point. Edi­tions can be found on AbeBooks–for exam­ple here and here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ray Brad­bury Reveals the True Mean­ing of Fahren­heit 451: It’s Not About Cen­sor­ship, But Peo­ple “Being Turned Into Morons by TV”

To Read This Exper­i­men­tal Edi­tion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451, You’ll Need to Add Heat to the Pages

Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Draws the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents, from Nixon to Trump

Ralph Steadman’s Sur­re­al­ist Illus­tra­tions of George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm (1995)

How Hunter S. Thomp­son — and Psilo­cy­bin — Influ­enced the Art of Ralph Stead­man, Cre­at­ing the “Gonzo” Style

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.