[stripes1776]

Not ironic. Deliberate. This is alluded to in the introduction to The Hobbit and fully explained in the Appendix to The Return of the King: Tolkien despised the Disneyesque rendition of dwarfs as much as he hated Shakespeare's interpretation of fairies. He took a number of small rebellious linguistic steps to separate his characters from the silly notions then in fashion.

Yes, I agree that the spelling was deliberate. If he took small steps in spelling, he made a gigantic leap in the imagination. I think I read some place that the copy editor at his publisher was always correcting his spelling, which irritated him immensely.

[donmeaker]

When did Disney come out with Snow White? 1937.

When did Tolkien write “The Hobbit”? 1932, though it was published in 1937, back then there would have been no time to rewrite it in reaction to a movie.

Rather odd sense of History you have. As a professor he made a mistake, and covered it up in his later writings. A comfortingly human reaction from a curiously human author.