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.
Fantasy is a type of genre that allows the reader to experience a place or world unlike any they have before. Fantasy lifts all our ideas of reality, and allows us to be a part of experiences that we would otherwise have no chance of taking part in.
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Fantasy creatures played a huge part in The Hobbit. The fact that all the main characters are supernatural beings of some sort shows the importance of fantasy in this novel. Hobbits came straight from the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien. Dwarves, wizards, trolls , goblins, elves and dragons appear in many tall-tales and fantasies. The Hobbit is a book that is all about weird, make-believe things. Without magic, The Hobbit probably would not even exist. The amount of magic and the supernatural in this book is truly astounding. Every major event in the entire story has at least a hint of magic or fantasy in it. Many novels run on fantasy, but in this one it seems to be a dominating force. The story combines all types of fantasy, which is what makes it one of the greatest books of