Progress in Bimble Town

Progress in Bimble Town is an environmental poem that was written by J.R.R. Tolkien as a part of his series Tales and Songs of Bimble Bay.

Poem excerpt

Bimble-Bay has a steep street:
it runs down with many houses,
tall ones, short ones; shops with meat,
shops with cabbages, shops with blouses,
jersies, jumpers and umbrellas;
a post-office (new and squalid);
a library filled with best-sellers
in yellow jackets; an old, solid,

Background

The Progress of Bimble

While it is untold when exactly Tolkien first wrote the earliest version of the poem, Douglas A. Anderson suggested in The Annotated Hobbit that it was probably written only a "few years prior to publication" but after 1927. This early version of the poem, entitled The Progress of Bimble, was seventy-eight lines longer than the latest version of the poem. The creation of the poem was probably influenced by the Tolkien family’s vacations to Filey, North Yorkshire in 1922. The poem's dedication "to the Mayor and Corporation" might have been inspired by Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Bimble Town or Progress by the Sea

In 1931, Tolkien massively revised the poem, reducing it drastically down to just forty-two lines. Tolkien then made two typescripts with the earlier one having the subtitle Bimble Town or Progress by the Sea and the later one having the title Progress in Bimble Town.

Further revisions

The second typescript was published in October 15 of 1931 in the fiftieth issue of the Oxford Magazine, where it appeared as no. 1 on page 22 credited under the pseudonym K. Bagpuize, a play on the name Kingston Bagpuize. Later, part of the poem was used in the last chapter of Roverandom. The poem was republished in full in The Annotated Hobbit.