History of LOTR :: essays research papers

Legend has it that prof John Ronald Reuel Tolkien of the University of Oxford was at his desk one summers daytime in 1930 wearily correcting examination papers when he came upon a summon 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 whim 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, eternally at the same desk, he developed a story most a funny creature named Bilbo who was befriended by dwarfs and faced various adventures with them in a quest to steal a dragons gold. When he finished make-up the story, he let some of his students read it. Little did he cognise 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 i nstant sensation, popular with critics and the public alike. It very rapidly became a classic. Soon, readers and his publisher asked the professor for a sequel. For many years, none was eer presented. Then, in 1954, Professor Tolkien stunned the world with The Lord of the go. Nearly xv 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 virtually the stealing of a dragons hoard by some dwarves with the reluctant precaution of a little hobbit. The Lord of the Rings, on the some other hand, stretches the adult conceit with its account of a world in peril. Each work has virtues fitting to its kind, but they had better be read independently of each other as contrasting, if related, specimens of the fantasys writers art... The Hobbit was never meant to be a wholly serious tale, nor his newborn audience to listen without laughing oft en. In contradistinction, The Lord of the Rings does on occasion evoke smiles, but most of the time its issues go as well 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 send World War II paper shortage.