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- His full name is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

- Author of the Hobbit, The Lord Of The Rings series and many more.

- Tolkien was a professor at the University of Oxford. There he taught Old English.

- Tolkien was born on January 3rd, 1892 in South Africa. He lived from 1892 until 1973; 81-years-old.

- He moved to England as a child and studied Edward's school in Birmingham and at Exeter College.

- Later on, he studied at Oxford University where he got his bachelor's degree and master's degree.

- He fought on the front lines in the First World War.

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/

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When:
- The book was completed in 1932. He presented his rough draft to his fellow colleagues on September 21, 1937.
- This book was written after J.R.R Tolkien's experiences in WW1.

Where:
- He came across a blank sheet of paper as he was marking his students work at Oxford University.
- From this came the first famous words of the book. These words were "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
- Eventually, this sentence turned into a whole novel that surrounded the journey of Bilbo Baggins to the Lonely Mountain in a fight for treasure.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hobbit-real-life-battles-inspired-4766016

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Today marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of JRR Tolkien's classic fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. This literary institution was born when the Oxford don (1892-1973) had grown bored of marking students' coursework in his study one evening and reached instead for a blank sheet of paper, idly jotting down a sentence that would become the book's famous opening line: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

From this simple starting point, Tolkien spun the epic tale of Bilbo Baggins' unexpected journey to the Lonely Mountain in pursuit of treasure, completing the work in 1932 and presenting a draft to a number of his eminent colleagues for inspection.

One of these was CS Lewis, whose own Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) would likewise cast its innocent protagonists into a fight between the forces of good and evil in a magical realm and share Tolkien's deeply felt Christian sentiments. The men were close friends and fellow members of the exclusive Inklings club, a group known to meet at the Eagle and Child pub in St Giles every Tuesday during term-time to discuss literary matters.

Tolkien had also presented a copy of his manuscript to one of his students, Elaine Griffiths, who in turn showed it to Susan Dagnall, a friend then working for publishers George Allen & Unwin. Dagnall tipped off her boss, Stanley Unwin, who decided to go ahead and print the novel on 21 September 1937 after rave reviews from his young son. The Hobbit has never been out of print since.

Tolkien's story and its sequel The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) have delighted children and adults of all ages for eight decades now, their popularity only growing with the turn of the millennium thanks to Peter Jackson's three-film adaptations of both books, The Hobbit cycle filmed more recently (2012-14) and starring Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and Richard Armitage.

The academic drew on his extensive knowledge of European pagan and pre-Christian folklore, myths and fairy tales for inspiration. As Oxford's Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon between 1925 and 1945, Tolkien amused himself by writing narrative poems on fantastical themes and inventing Elvish runic languages from scratch.

The Hobbit's character and place names are derived from Icelandic linguistic traditions and echo those given in Old Norse sagas such as the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda. The cunning dragon Smaug has been compared to that in the Old English legend of Beowulf (by way of William Morris), a text Tolkien lectured on during his tenure at Pembroke College, while Thorin Okenshield's battalion of dwarves have been likened to those described by the Brothers Grimm.

The writer also borrowed from Victorian genre fiction, developing ideas first proffered in such works as Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1862), The Princess and the Goblin (1872) by George MacDonald and Samuel Rutherford Crockett's The Black Douglas (1899).

Gollum's gold ring enchanted with a corrupting curse appears to stem from an anecdote Tolkien was regaled with during a visit to an archaeological dig in Gloucestershire in 1929 about the discovery of just such a relic in 1785 in a field once home to a Roman temple.

Although staunchly resistant to interpretative or allegorical readings of his work, JRR Tolkien's memories of his childhood in Sarehole near Birmingham provided the basis for Bilbo's verdant homeland of The Shire by his own admission. A rural idyll where the hobbits live a parochial life of leisure shielded from the dark ambitions of Middle Earth, The Shire is often regarded as an idealised vision of a pre-industrial (and thus, in Tolkien's eyes, prelapsarian) England. Tolkien himself told his publishers his depiction was "more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee [1897]."

Other locations in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were inspired by real places the author had visited: Rohan and Gondor by the Malvern Hills and their ties to the ancient kingdom of Mercia; Rivendell by a holiday the young Tolkien took to the Swiss Alps in 1911; and the Two Towers by Perrett's Folly and the Waterworks Tower in Edgbaston.

The Hobbit's climactic Battle of the Five Armies meanwhile is said to stem from Tolkien's experiences during the Great War (see also the Dead Marshes and Black Gate of Mordor in Lord of the Rings).

Initially reluctant to serve with the British Army, describing himself as "a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage", Tolkien relented and joined the Lancashire Fusilliers as a second lieutenant in July 1915, dispatched to face the horrors of the Somme a year later. Operating behind the lines at Bouzincourt, he participated in the assaults on the Schwaben Redoubt and the Leipzig Salient before succumbing to trench fever. His illness no doubt saved him sharing the cruel fate of so many of the brave young men he fought alongside and expressed his affinity for.

Though he denied it, Tolkien's first-hand experience of bloody conflict and brutal slaughter in France must surely have informed the camaraderie displayed by his heroes as they descend into battle, prepared to sacrifice their lives for a cause they believe in.

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What were JRR Tolkien's inspirations when writing The Hobbit?

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Today marks the 80th anniversary of the publication of JRR Tolkien's classic fantasy novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.

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When:
- Many of the battles he faced inspired scenes in his books. One of these battles was the Battle of the Sommes. This battle related to the Battle of the Five Armies.

Battle of the Sommes:
- The Battle of the Sommes occurred in Northern France.
- It was one of the most gruesome wars of WW1. It lasted for five months.
- The British and French armies battled the Germans in order to relieve the French Army who was fighting in Verdun.
- However, the German army was too powerful for the Allies. This resulted in over one million dead and wounded from both sides of the war.

Where:
- The book describes the setting as being in Middle-Earth.
- The shire was inspired by the village of Sarehole.
- The village had a few square miles of farmland in the countryside.
- The Misty Mountains were heavily influenced by the mountains in Switzerland.

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Small hairy feet will be back on screen again as The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies marches into cinemas worldwide next week. While the film trilogy, along with the previous Lord of the Rings adaptation, were shot in New Zealand, the books' author JRR Tolkien drew inspiration mainly from the English landscape.

So which locations are behind the fictional Middle Earth?

The Shire

In a letter to his publishers, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote that The Shire - home to the "little people" better known as hobbits - was "more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of [Queen Victoria's] Diamond Jubilee" in 1897.

Although born in South Africa in 1892, Tolkien moved to England at the age of four with his mother and brother after the death of his father. They lived in and around Birmingham, including at the village of Sarehole, which, like the fictional Hobbiton, had a corn-grinding mill by the water.

In a newspaper interview Tolkien fondly recalled the area, saying the Shire was "inspired by a few cherished square miles of actual countryside at Sarehole".

However, while the mill is still standing, the area is now surrounded by Birmingham's suburbs.

Hobbit holes and The Ring

As for the hobbits' homes and their eye-catching round doors, some people claim they were based on ruins at Lydney Park, in Gloucestershire.

In 1929, Tolkien, then a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, visited an archaeological dig at the estate on the site of a Roman temple, known as Dwarf's Hill.

It is thought that he was then told about an inscribed gold ring found in a Hampshire field in 1785, also linked to a Roman curse tablet discovered at Dwarf's Hill. Tolkien is believed to have started writing The Hobbit, about a Halfling who finds a cursed ring, a year later.

"There's a lot of nice associations to it for Tolkien fans," says Mathew Lyons, author of There and Back Again: In the Footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien.

"There are these holes down there, which the local tradition says used to be lived in by little people [but] Tolkien didn't explicitly make that connection."

Rohan and Gondor

There is debate over whether the horse-riders of Rohan are based on the Anglo-Saxons. Tolkien wrote the characters did not resemble "the ancient English... except in a general way due to their circumstances; a simpler and more primitive people living in contact with a higher and more venerable culture".

Despite this, many academics link Rohan to one of the most powerful kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England - Mercia, which was based in the Midlands where Tolkien spent much of his youth. Some also say the riders' names are rooted in the Mercian dialect.

"Tolkien identified at quite an emotional level with Mercia, and West Mercia in particular, and the language, and he put a lot of that into Rohan," says Mr Lyons.

George Sayer, who wrote the biography of CS Lewis, remembered hiking with Tolkien in the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire.

The Lord of the Rings author "lived the book as we walked, sometimes comparing parts of the hills with, for instance, the White Mountains" that marked the border between Rohan and Gondor, he said.

Following an Italian holiday in 1955, Tolkien, somewhat light-heartedly, referred to Venice as Gondor. However, this was after he had written Lord of the Rings. He also wrote that Gondor's power to build "the gigantic and massive" resembled the ancient Egyptians.

The Two (and more) Towers

Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings as a single epic but, due to its length, his publishers printed it in three volumes, naming the second book The Two Towers - a title of which the author wrote he was "not at all happy".

He wrote that it could be linked to the tower of Orthanc [the home of the wizard Saruman] and the "Tower of Cirith Ungol" - a fortress of the dark lord Sauron - but said this was misleading as the story also prominently featured two other towers, Minas Tirith - the capital of Gondor - and the Dark Tower, Sauron's main base.

Many believe the towers were modelled on Perrott's Folly and the Waterworks Tower in the Birmingham suburb of Edgbaston, where Tolkien lived as a boy.

In addition, the illuminated clock tower at the University of Birmingham, visible across the city, has been suggested as the inspiration for the ever-watchful "Eye of Sauron".

Rivendell

In a letter to his son Michael, the author wrote that Bilbo Baggins' journey from the Elvish settlement of Rivendell to the Misty Mountains was based on a 1911 trip to Switzerland.

"We went on foot carrying great packs practically all the way from Interlaken, mainly by mountain paths, to Lauterbrunnen and so to Mürren and eventually to the head of Lauterbrunnenthal in a wilderness of morains," he recalled.

Barring the Elves' residence, Tolkien's drawing of Rivendell in the illustrated edition of The Hobbit is almost identical to a view of Lauterbrunnen Valley.

Dead Marshes

Although Tolkien fought in World War One, he said the two world wars had not inspired the writing of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

However, he did admit the landscape of the Dead Marshes, where Frodo Baggins is transfixed by corpses lying in pools, and the approach to Mordor's Black Gate "owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme".

But, as Tolkien wrote in the foreword to the second edition of Lord of the Rings: "An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous."

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Small hairy feet will be back on screen again as The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies marches into cinemas worldwide next week. While the film trilogy, along with the previous Lord of the Rings adaptation, were shot in New Zealand, the books' author JRR Tolkien drew inspiration mainly from the English landscape.

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- He created his own unique elvish languages such as Quenya and Sindarin. As well, he communicated with his wife in the languages he created.
- Learned how to read at the age of four. His mother allowed him to read as many books as he wished.
- Claimed that Alice and Wonderland as "amusing but disturbing."
- Enjoyed extra-curricular clubs that involved literature.
- He was romantic at 16-years-old. The young Tolkien fell in love with a woman named Edith Bratt.
- One of his hobbies was writing fantasy fiction novels. His love for writing resulted in the creation of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings series.
- He was a professor at Oxford University (1925-1929).
- He contributed to the Oxford English Dictionary that began in 1879. He focused on Germanic words.

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Though he's most often linked to his role as the Tenth Doctor on the legendary sci-fi series , David Tennant is much more than that, as audiences around the world are beginning to discover. Born David John McDonald in West Lothian, Scotland on April 18, 1971, the man who would become David Tennant has spent the past 30-plus years carving out a very particular niche for himself-both on the stage and screen in England and, increasingly more, as a staple of the big screen in Hollywood. To celebrate the award-winning actor's birthday, here are 15 things you might not know about David Tennant.

1. HE TOOK HIS NAME FROM THE PET SHOP BOYS.

As a teenager, the budding actor learned that because there was already a David McDonald in the actors' union, he needed to come up with an alternate moniker to pursue a professional acting career. Right around the same time, he read an interview in Smash Hits with Neil Tennant, lead vocalist for the Pet Shop Boys, and "David Tennant" was born.

Today, he legally is David Tennant. "I am now actually Tennant-have been for a few years," he said in 2013. "It was an issue with the Screen Actors' Guild in the U.S., who wouldn't let me keep my stage name unless it was my legal name. Faced with the prospect of working under two different names on either side of the globe, I had to take the plunge and rename myself! So although I always liked the name, I'm now more intimately associated with it than I had ever imagined. Thank you, Neil Tennant."

2. HE BECAME AN ACTOR WITH THE SPECIFIC GOAL OF STARRING ON DOCTOR WHO.

While a lot of young kids dream of growing up to become astronauts or professional athletes, Tennant set his own career goal at the tender age of three: to star on Doctor Who. It was Tom Baker's version of The Doctor in particular that inspired Tennant to become an actor. He carried around a Doctor Who doll and wrote Who-inspired essays at school. " Doctor Who was a massive influence," Tennant told Rolling Stone. "I think it was for everyone in my generation; growing up, it was just part of the cultural furniture in Britain in the '70s and '80s."

On April 16, 2004, just two days before his 34th birthday, Tennant achieved that goal when he was officially named The Tenth Doctor, taking over for Christopher Eccleston. "I am delighted, excited, and honored to be the Tenth Doctor," Tennant said at the time. "I grew up loving Doctor Who and it has been a lifelong dream to get my very own TARDIS."

3. THOUGH BECOMING THE DOCTOR WAS A LIFELONG DREAM, THERE WAS SOME TREPIDATION.

Though landing the lead in Doctor Who was a lifelong dream come true for Tennant, the initial excitement was followed by a little trepidation. When asked by The Scotsman whether he worried about being typecast, Tennant admitted: "I did remember being thrilled to bits when I got asked and then a few days later thinking, 'Oh, is this a terrible idea?' ... But that didn't last very long. Time will tell. The only option is you don't take these jobs when they come up. You've got to just roll with the punches."

4. HE MADE HIS PROFESSIONAL DEBUT IN A PSA.

While most actors have some early roles they'd prefer to forget, Tennant's first professional gig didn't come in some otherwise forgettable movie, TV series, or play. When he was 16 years old, he booked a role in an anti-smoking PSA for the Glasgow Health Board, which played on television and was shown in schools. Thanks to the power of the internet, you can watch his performance above.

5. HE MARRIED THE FIFTH DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER, WHO ONCE PLAYED THE TENTH DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER.

Confused? In 2011, Tennant married Georgia Moffett, who played his artificially created daughter, Jenny, in the 2008 Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Daughter." In real life, Moffett really is The Doctor's daughter; her father is Peter Davison, who played the Fifth Doctor from 1981 to 1984.

6. HIS FIRST MOVIE ROLE HAD HIM ACTING OPPOSITE CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON.

In 1996, Tennant landed his first movie role in Michael Winterbottom's Jude, where he played the very descriptive "Drunk Undergraduate." His big scene had him acting opposite Christopher Eccleston-the man who, less than a decade later, would hand over the keys to the TARDIS to Tennant.

7. HE AVOIDS READING REVIEWS OF HIS WORK.

While it's hard to imagine that Tennant has ever had to deal with too many scathing reviews, it doesn't really matter to the actor: good or bad, he avoids reading them. When asked during a livechat with The Guardian about one particularly negative review, and whether he reads and reacts to them, Tennant replied: "The bad review to which you refer was actually for a German expressionist piece about the Round Table called Merlin. It was the first extensive review I'd ever had, and it was absolutely appalling. Not that it's scarred into my memory in any way whatsoever. I try not to read them, these days. Reviews aren't really for the people who are performing, and-good or bad-they don't help. You always get a sense if something you're in has been well received or not, that's unavoidable. But beyond that, details are best avoided."

8. HE HOSTED MASTERPIECE THEATRE.

In 2007, Masterpiece Theatre reinvented itself. In addition to dropping the "Theatre" from its title, the series announced that it was splintering into three different seasons- Masterpiece Classic, Masterpiece Mystery!, and Masterpiece Contemporary. Unlike the days of the past, when Alistair Cooke held court, each of the new series had its own host, Tennant among them. (He was in charge of Masterpiece Contemporary.)

9. HE GOT A LOT OF YOUNGER AUDIENCES INTERESTED IN SHAKESPEARE.

Tennant has logged a lot of hours with the Royal Shakespeare Company over the years. In 2008, while still starring in Doctor Who, he took on the role that every actor wants in the RSC's production of Hamlet, which ended up being one of London's hottest (and hardest to get) tickets. The Guardian reported that hundreds of people were lined up to buy tickets, with some even camping out overnight outside the West End theater. Within three hours of the tickets going on sale, all 6000 of them were sold out.

" Hamlet is a very popular play," a RSC spokesperson said at the time. "It's the most famous. But obviously there's the factor that David Tennant is in it and the good news is that he's bringing a lot of younger audiences to Shakespeare."

10. HE WAS ON A ROYAL MAIL STAMP.

In 2011, the Royal Mail paid tribute to Royal Shakespeare Company's 50th anniversary with a series of stamps featuring images from a handful of the RSC's productions, including Tennant as Hamlet.

11. HE ALMOST PLAYED HANNIBAL LECTER.

Though it's easy to see why Bryan Fuller cast Mads Mikkelsen in the title role of his television adaptation of Hannibal, Tennant came pretty close to playing the fava bean-and-chianti-loving, flesh-eating serial killer at the heart of Thomas Harris's novels. Fuller was so impressed with Tennant's dark side that he tried to make a guest appearance happen during the series' run.

"I'm a huge fan of David Tennant, and we've been trying to get him on the show for quite some time," Fuller said. "He's such a spectacular actor. He brings such an effervescence to every performance. I would love to have David on the show. Or just write for David! I would kill and eat somebody to work with David! He's my favorite Doctor."

12. HE'S JODIE WHITTAKER'S FAVORITE DOCTOR.

Fuller isn't the only one who puts Tennant at the top of their Favorite Doctor list. Jodie Whittaker, who recently made her debut as the Thirteenth Doctor-and is the first woman to take on the role-recently told The Sunday Times that "David [is my favorite Doctor] of course, because I know him." (The two spent three seasons co-starring in the British crime drama Broadchurch.)

When asked about Whittaker's casting at the New Orleans Wizard World Comic Con, and whether he had given her any words of advice, Tennant said that, "We had a wee chat, yes. It is quite a unique job, because it's a show that has so much history to it. And it has a reach that's quite unlike other things. It's a bit of a kind of cultural thing-Who's going to be the Doctor?-it's a news story, really. So to find yourself in the middle of that is a bit overwhelming. I think inevitably, you sort of look to people who'd been there before to go, 'What is this like? What is this madness I entered into?' And that's certainly been the case with Matt and Peter, and now with Jodie. I know that Jodie's talked to Peter, and she's talked to Matt. You just for a little support group. You go, 'What is this madness? Tell me about it.' And of course, you know, she 's a little trepidatious, but she's basically really excited. She's such a fantastic choice for it. You see it in just those 30 seconds that she did at the end of the last episode. You just go, 'Oh my god, she's all over it. Brilliant. It's great.'"

13. HE'S DYING TO WORK WITH AARON SORKIN.

When asked by Collider if there's ever been a television show he's watched and wished he was a part of, Tennant copped to being a huge fan of The West Wing.

" The West Wing is finished now [but] that's the one that I would have loved to have been part of," he said. "I'd love to work with Aaron Sorkin on something. Just the way he writes, he has no fear in writing people that are fiercely intelligent, and I love that. I love the speed of his stuff, and the way people free-associate and interact. That kind of writing is very exciting. It's hard to have that kind of clarity of voice, especially in a world where there's a million executives listening to everything you do and having an opinion and trying to drive everything towards the lowest common denominator because that's what happens when things are made by committee. So, to have someone who's got a strong individual voice that is allowed to be heard is quite increasingly rare. These people need to be cherished."

14. HE HAS EARNED A LOT OF FAN ACCOLADES, INCLUDING "COOLEST MAN ON TV."

In addition to his many professional acting accolades- including a couple of BAFTAs and a Daytime Emmy and an Olivier Award nomination-Tennant has earned a number of less official "awards" over the years. In 2007, a Radio Times survey named him the Coolest Man on TV. The National Television Awards named him Most Popular Actor of 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010. In 2008, he was one of Cosmopolitan's Sexiest Men in the World. In 2012, British GQ readers named him the third Best Dressed Man (behind Tom Hiddleston and Robert Pattinson).

15. YOU CAN BUY HIS PANTS.

On April 17, 2018, as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Stitch in Time fundraiser, the organization began auctioning off more than 50 original costumes worn during RSC performances. Among the items that you can bid on? The black trousers Tennant wore in Hamlet, and the white robe he wore in Richard II.

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10 Things You Might Not Know About J.R.R. Tolkien

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Though he's most often linked to his role as the Tenth Doctor on the legendary sci-fi series , David Tennant is much more than that, as audiences around the world are beginning to discover.

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- The Hobbit was inspired by Icelandic linguistic traditions.

- He was a fan of William Morris who was a poet. William Morris' poem Beowulf is what inspired the author to add a dragon (Smaug) into the story.

- The precious gold ring was inspired by the author's visit to an archeological dig in Gloucester in the year of 1929. This was because there was an ancient cursed ring that was found by an archeologist in 1795.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-29787528

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Eighty years ago Thursday, English writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, otherwise known as J.R.R. Tolkien, released the first edition of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. The children's fantasy told the tale of Bilbo Baggins, a sweet, homebody hobbit who goes on a life-changing quest to win treasure and defeat the evil, fire-breathing dragon Smaug.

Although The Hobbit wasn't published until 1937, Tolkien was already known for his narrative poems and short tales based on fantasy beings such as elves and hobbits. An Oxford professor from 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was heavily inspired by the writings, languages and fantasies of Icelandic linguistic traditions, particularly Old Norse sagas like the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda.

Iconic English literature may also have played a role in Tolkien's first novel. He was a fan of William Morris, who translated Beowulf, and his creation of Smaug may have been inspired by the dragon in that ancient English poem. Tolkien often lectured on the tale while he was teaching at Pembroke College. The dwarfish hordes that control Middle-earth in Tolkien's books have many similarities to the dwarfs in the classic Grimm's Fairy Tales, which Tolkien also admired.

As for the precious and cursed gold ring, which was to be the focal point of The Hobbit's sequel, The Lord of the Rings, the author reportedly came up with the idea following a visit to an archaeological dig in Gloucester in 1929. An archaeologist found a Roman relic there in 1785.

Various locations Bilbo visits during his journey were inspired by Tolkien's own travels. In many ways, the Shire, where Bilbo lived, was influenced by the rural town Sarehole, near Birmingham, where Tolkien grew up. The author once told publishers that the Shire was representative of a preindustrial England and said that his creation was "more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee," which was held in 1897, according to The Independent.

Meanwhile, Middle-earth regions like Rohan and Gondor were inspired by Tolkien's trips to the Malvern Hills, while Rivendell came from memories of a vacation Tolkien took as a young boy to the Swiss Alps. The Two Towers arose in Tolkien's imagination after visits to Perrott's Folly and the Waterworks Tower in Edgbaston.

Initially, the tale of the hobbit was merely a bedtime story Tolkien told to his sons, John, Michael and Christopher. It started with the famous line that also opens the book: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

Christopher Tolkien recalled his father sharing the oral version around 1929, according to The Guardian. Eventually, in 1937, while in his study at Oxford, Tolkien decided to breathe new life into the story of Bilbo Higgins by writing an entire book based on the thrilling adventures he often shared with his children.

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What inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to write 'The Hobbit' 80 years ago?

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Eighty years ago Thursday, English writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, otherwise known as J.R.R. Tolkien, released the first edition of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. The children's fantasy told the tale of Bilbo Baggins, a sweet, homebody hobbit who goes on a life-changing quest to win treasure and defeat the evil, fire-breathing dragon Smaug.

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Jahangir, Rumeana. “The Hobbit: How England Inspired Tolkien's Middle Earth.” BBC News, 7 Dec. 2014, www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-29787528.

Williams, Janice. “'THE HOBBIT' ANNIVERSARY: WHAT INSPIRED J.R.R. TOLKIEN'S ICONIC BOOK?” Newsweek, 21 Sept. 2017, www.newsweek.com/hobbit-jrr-tolkien-anniversary-inspiration-668989.

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Gottesman, Brian. “10 Surprising Facts About J.R.R. Tolkien.” Mental Floss, 2 Sept. 2018, mentalfloss.com/article/59736/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-jrr-tolkien.

Kelsey, Stephanie. “42 Fantastic Facts About J.R.R. Tolkien.” Factinate, 23 Sept. 2018, www.factinate.com/people/42-fantastic-facts-j-r-r-tolkien/.

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Manger, Warren. The Hobbit: Real Life Battles That Inspired Wars of Middle Earth. Mirror, 2014, www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hobbit-real-life-battles-inspired-4766016.

Sommerlad, Joe. “The Hobbit at 80: What Were JRR Tolkien's Inspirations behind His First Fantasy Tale of Middle Earth?” Independent, 20 Sept. 2017, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/the-hobbit-80-jrr-tolkien-anniversary-published-lord-of-the-rings-middle-earth-fantasy-inspiration-a7957321.html.

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Doughan, David. “J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch.” The Tolkien Society, www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/.

“J. R. R. Tolkien.” Famous Authors, www.famousauthors.org/j-r-r-tolkien.

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MLA - When/Where did the book take place?

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MLA - When/Where did the book take place?

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Jahangir, Rumeana. “The Hobbit: How England Inspired Tolkien's Middle Earth.” BBC News, 7 Dec. 2014, www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-29787528.

“The Battle of the Somme: 141 Days of Horror.” BBC, www.bbc.com/timelines/ztngxsg#z9jt9qt.