Ronald Ruel John Tolkien - a great writer, an outstanding scientist and the one who wrote The Hobbit - was born January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. His parents moved there from England in connection with the work of his father Arthur. Tolkien lost both parents early: his father died in Africa in 1896 after the rest of the family returned to England, and his mother Mabel died in 1904 near Birmingham. After the death of Mabel over John and his younger brother, Hilary took custody of a family friend, Francis Morgan. Soon after, Tolkien went to King Edward's school and then went to Oxford.
At Oxford, Tolkien wanted a degree in English and literature. He developed a special passion for philology, the study of languages. Studying Old English, Anglo-Saxon and Welsh poetry, he continued to experiment with the language on his own. This language will form the basis for its imaginary world, known as Middle-earth.
When and who wrote The Hobbit?
By 1916, Tolkien received a degree and married his beloved Edith Bratt. He eventually took up a teaching position at Oxford. By 1929, he and Edith had a fourth child. Over the years, the writer also began his great mythology of Middle-earth, a storybook entitled The Silmarillion. The Hobbit (1936), his first published work, grew out of these stories. A simple children's story about a little man who takes part in big adventures; the playful tone of the novel and the images made it a hit not only among children but also adults. No one ever wondered who wrote The Hobbit - everyone had his name publicly known. The success of the novel brought Tolkien a huge number of fans who were eager to learn more about the world that he created around his invented language and mythology, only a small part of which could be found in The Hobbit. Since then, everyone knew who wrote The Hobbit about Middle-earth, the dragon Smog, and Bilbo.
The hobbit and the rural Englishman
In the plot and characters of The Hobbit, you can find motifs from the ancient heroic Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian epics that Tolkien studied while living in rural England of the middle class. In many ways, the humor and charm of the novel lie in moving a simple rural Englishman from the 1930s into a heroic medieval setting. Tolkien admitted that his hero, Bilbo Baggins, was copied from a rural Englishman of the time. Tolkien was the man who wrote The Hobbit in English, relying not only on his imagination, but also on the environment.
By the time Tolkien began working on the sequel to The Hobbit, he had made friends with another famous Oxford professor and writer Clive Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Their friendship lasted for many years. Tolkien and Lewis have always readily criticized each other's work as part of the Inklings informal group of writers.
Do you know who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
From 1945 to 1959, Tolkien continued to teach at Oxford and wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a sequel to The Hobbit. The trilogy brought glory to Tolkien in England and America, but he was never a public figure. He continued to work with The Silmarillion and other tales, living a quiet life. Despite public recognition, he felt comfortable among middle-class people, where he could write and think. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973, so The Silmarillion was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher in 1977.
Brave and decisive Bilbo
The main theme of the novel "The Hobbit, or Round Trip" is the development of Bilbo as a hero. At the beginning of the book, Bilbo appears before the reader as a timid hobbit, relaxed and resting on his laurels in his safe little hole in the Bag End. When Gandalf tells him to travel with the dwarves of Thorin, Bilbo becomes so scared that he faints. But in the course of the novel, one can see how he is progressing, facing dangers and adversities, justifying Gandalf's early statements that this little hobbit has much more than it seems at first glance.
Bilbo has hidden reserves of internal strength that even the hobbit itself cannot take seriously. Confronting the trolls, the Gollum ring case, killing a spider, rescuing the dwarves in Mirkwood and talking face to face with the great dragon Smog - all this provided Bilbo with the opportunity to test his determination. Bilbo acts like a real hero, no matter what test fate presents him.
John Tolkien is the one who wrote The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, these are great works. The main source of inspiration for their creation was the texts of the ancient epic (especially the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon epics, such as Beowulf), which Tolkien studied at Oxford. The written books brought Tolkien great success and made him the "father" of modern fantasy. In 2008 at The Times, he was ranked sixth on the list of the 50 greatest English writers since 1945.