Although it is sometimes thought that hobbits wrote little before the beginning of the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, and while it is true that we have had and continue to have a lively oral tradition, many families have cherished communal manuscript books. These contain, as Gandalf the Grey has opined,                 . However, exact genealogy and precise family trees are, hobbits maintain, crucially important not just to build and maintain kinship relations and alliances, not just to ensure the smooth passage of property from one generation to the next, bit also to hobbits’ sense of themselves as a people of families and clans.

Moreover, family genealogical books are only kind of hobbit family writing. Gardening manuals are ubiquitous, containing tips and techniques for planting successful kitchen gardens. For hobbits, recipe books go hand-in-hand with gardening , and it is the rare hobbit family who does not possess a family recipe book and a family gardening book.