This is a simple question, Asking what Tolkien wrote about the sizes of Hobbits, Dwarves, and humans.
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I did some research on Hobbit Heights for two answers on another site recently.
And I thought that I would give my results here, to save other people the trouble of looking up the evidence I found, and so anyone who knows of other evidence can add it.
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Of course the sizes of newborn babies will be a lot smaller than the sizes of adults.
Tolkien described Hobbits in the beginning of The Hobbit:
The mother of our particular hobbit—-what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves.
If adult humans are usually about five to six feet tall, adult hobbits should have been about two and a half to three feet tall.
I read the above quote on January 1, 2024 in my paperback copy of The Hobbit, a revised edition dated to 1966. And this is different from what I remember from first reading The Hobbit long ago in what might have been the original edition. What I remembered it saying was that Hobbits were smaller than dwarves but larger than Lilliputians.
The answer by Ibid to this question:
Did Tolkien change the description of Hobbits in The Hobbit?
says that the first and second editions of The Hobbit did compare Hobbits to Lilliputians but it was changed for the third edition.
They are (or were) small people, smaller than dwarves (and they have no beards) but very much larger than lilliputians.
I also note that in The Return of the King, Book V, chapter I, “Minas Tirith”, Pippin meets a boy named Bergil. Bergil says he is tens year old and almost five feet tall. Pippin says:
I am nearly twenty-nine, so I pass you there; though I am but four feet and not likely to grow any more, save sideways.
Though as it turns out Pippin did later grow several inches, maybe half a foot or more.
The Fellowship of the Ring, the Prolog, I Concerning Hobbits says:
For they are a little people, smaller than Dwarves: less stout and stocky, that is, even when they are not actually much shorter. Their height is variable, ranging between two and four feet of our measure. They seldom now reach three feet; but they have dwindled, they say, and in ancient times they were taller. According to the Red Book Bandobras Took (Bullroarer), son of Isengrim the Second, was four feet five and able to ride a horse. He was surpassed in Hobbit records only by two famous characters of old; but that curious matter is dwelt with in this book
That indicates that adult Hobbits two feet tall would be much shorter than adult dwarves, while adult Hobbits four feet tall might be the same size as Dwarves or only a little bit shorter. Thus I guess that most Dwarves probably have heights somewhere in the range of four to five feet. But I have no way of knowing whether adult Dwarf heights range from three and a half to four and half feet, or from four and a half feet to five feet, or whatever.
answered Jan 4 at 17:59
