History of LOTR :: essays research papers

Legend has it that Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien of the University of Oxford was at his desk one summer's day in 1930 wearily correcting examination papers when he came upon a page in an answer-book that was left blank.. "In a hole in the ground," he wrote on the page, "there lived a hobbit." At the time, he had no idea what a hobbit was, much less why it would live in a hole in the ground- but he had to find out. So, during his free time, always at the same desk, he developed a story about a funny creature named Bilbo who was befriended by dwarfs and faced various adventures with them in a quest to steal a dragon's gold. When he finished writing the story, he let some of his students read it. Little did he know that one of his pupils was an employee for Stanley Unwin of the publishing firm Allen and Unwin. She introduced the book to Mr. Unwin and in 1937 Allen and Unwin published The Hobbit. Professor Tolkien was suddenly an author. The book was an instant sensation, popular with critics and the public alike. It very quickly became a classic. Soon, readers and his publisher asked the professor for a sequel. For many years, none was ever presented. Then, in 1954, Professor Tolkien stunned the world with The Lord of the Rings. Nearly fifteen years in the making, LOTR was the polar opposite of "The Hobbit," despite being its sequel. As professor Paul H. Kocher wrote in Master of Middle-Earth "The Hobbit is a story for children about the stealing of a dragon's hoard by some dwarves with the reluctant aid of a little hobbit. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, stretches the adult imagination with its account of a world in peril. Each work has virtues proper to its kind, but they had better be read independently of each other as contrasting, if related, specimens of the fantasy's writers art... The Hobbit was never meant to be a wholly serious tale, nor his young audience to listen without laughing often. In contradistinction, The Lord of the Rings does on occasion evoke smiles, but most of the time its issues go too deep for laughter." It was ultimately decided by the publisher that The Lord of the Rings would be told through three separately released books due to a post World War II paper shortage.