J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author and scholar. He wrote a popular series of novels about imaginary creatures distantly related to humans called hobbits . Tolkien introduced the characters in The Hobbit (1937).
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Prepare yourself for Gandalf’s fireworks, second breakfast with the hobbits, and an adventure, it is J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday! Tolkien’s character Bilbo Baggins celebrated his “eleventy-first” (111th) birthday in the books, but we are celebrating what would have been Tolkien’s 131st birthday today. J.R.R. Tolkien was an English author and scholar. He is the famous author of The Hobbit (1937) and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The three novels in the trilogy are The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), and The Return of the King (1955).

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on Jan. 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, of English parents. From 1925 to 1959, he taught at Oxford University in England. He specialized in medieval languages and literature and wrote several scholarly works in this field. Tolkien’s hobbit stories show the influence of medieval English, German, and Scandinavian languages and literature.

His novels feature wrote an imaginary people called hobbits. Tolkien introduced the short, hairy-footed hobbits in The Hobbit (1937). He continued their story in three related novels called “The Lord of the Rings.” Hobbits are industrious and good-natured. They live in a world called Middle-earth, along with elves, goblins, wizards, and human beings. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, discovers a ring that conveys the power of invisibility but also corrupts the user. The hero of “The Lord of the Rings” is Frodo Baggins, Bilbo’s cousin. After many adventures, Frodo destroys the ring so that Sauron, the evil Dark Lord, cannot use it against the people of Middle-earth. Many critics have interpreted “The Lord of the Rings” as a symbolic moral or religious story about the battle between good and evil. But Tolkien insisted that he wrote the novels only as fantasies to entertain readers.

“The Lord of the Rings” consists of three epic motion pictures adapted from fantasy novels by the British author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. The filmed trilogy consists of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001); The Two Towers (2002); and The Return of the King (2003), shown here.
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The three novels of “The Lord of the Rings” were adapted into three immensely popular motion pictures released in 2001, 2002, and 2003. The Hobbit was also adapted into a trilogy of motion pictures that were “prequels” to “The Lord of the Rings.” These films were released in 2012, 2013, and 2014. A television series called “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” premiered in 2022. Set thousands of years before the events in The Hobbit, the series was based on some of the background history that Tolkien described in the books.

In 1917, Tolkien began to write The Silmarillion, a history of Middle-earth before the hobbits appeared. He worked on the book occasionally for the rest of his life but died before completing it. His son Christopher finished the novel, and it was published in 1977. A collection of previously unpublished material about Middle-earth and the legendary island of Numenor appeared in 1980 as Unfinished Tales. During the 1920′s and 1930′s, Tolkien wrote The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún, the story of a Norse hero and his wife. The book was published in 2009. Christopher Tolkien edited a 12-volume series of his father’s writings called The History of Middle-earth (1983-1996). Christopher also edited three stories of Middle-earth assembled from drafts his father left at his death. They are The Children of Húrin (2007), Beren and Lúthien (2017), and The Fall of Gondolin (2018). In addition, Christopher edited The Fall of Arthur (2013), a narrative poem about the legendary King Arthur that his father had left unfinished. Tolkien died on Sept. 2, 1973.