J. R. Tolkien Influences

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote one of the best sell books, The Lord of the Rings. There were many events throughout his life that influenced him to write the story. There were events that influenced his writing throughout his life, even from when he was very young. Along with being an author, he was also a lexicographer/linguist, volunteer in the army, and also a professor. As a linguist he made languages that would end up forming the base of the plot to his stories.

In Bloemfontein, South Africa on January 3, 1892 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born to the parents of Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien. As a young child, Tolkien had a hard time in Africa including an encounter he had with a very large spider. Some people believe that the spider inspired

11, 1918. His service soon ends and his academic career soon begins. he becomes a lexicographer for the Oxford University New English Dictionary. Later in 1920, he applies for the post of Reader in English Language at university of Leeds and got the Job. at this time he had become famous for his writing of Beowulf. He was a very popular and loved teacher during his time at Leeds. While there he met a man named E.V. Gordon and collaborated with him on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. They later founded the Viking club together. They wrote Songs for the Philologists. which was a collection of traditional songs that were translated to different languages for philologists in their club. In 1925 a spot teaching Anglo-Saxon at oxford opened and he applied for the position. Despite being young and all of the tough competition he is given the position. He teaches two more terms at Leeds and starts at Oxford in 1926. While at Oxford he meets C.S. Lewis and they soon become good friends. Tolkien invites Lewis to join a club called The Coalbiters. they began meeting in Lewis’s room where they would read Icelandic sagas and critique each other on their own writings (Willett 59). Lewis would always try to encourage Tolkien to write. Soon the coalbiters ran out of sagas to read and disbanded. Soon after Lewis and Tolkien join the Inklings. This group would gather and read their own writings and accept criticism from the other members. The groups leader soon left and

Three stories that stand out far more than any of the others were: The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. One day while grading some exams, he saw that a student had left a page completely blank. Seeing this as an opportunity he wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”. At the time he wrote this he didn’t know what a Hobbit was or why they lived in a hole in the ground (Doughan). He was inspired to find out what a Hobbit was exactly. Through this he came up with a story. An employee from a publishing firm obtained an unfinished copy of the story and asked him to finish it and send it to them to read. He writes the rest of the story and sends it to George Allen & Unwin and the chairman sends it to his son who then writes and approval letter and the firm publishes the story under the name The Hobbit. The book was such a great success that the publishers asked if he could produce a sequel to the story. Tolkien had wanted to get a story he had been working on for a long time published so he tried to get The Silmarillion published. The publishers read over it and denied it because they were afraid their audience would not like the way the writing style was so they denied it. Although disheartened by the denial of his story, he still began writing a sequel which would soon become known as The Lord of the Rings. The process of writing the story and editing ends up taking 16 years all together. Instead of bringing it