John Ronald Reuel Tolkien , Oxford professor, master of the languages and literatures of the ancient north, poet, story teller, creator of the orcs, the hobbits, the high-elves, the black riders, of Rivendell, Lothlorien and the misty mountains, creator of Mirkwood and the black land of Mordor.  Creator of the Fellowship of the Ring and the Dark Lords.  J.R.R. Tolkien is the omniscient presence behind Middle Earth.

His writings and teachings have been an inspiration to other artists.  The Hobbit, which was originally written for his children, and published over 50 years ago is now known to generations across the world.  And the Lord of the Rings has become one of the most intricate pieces of fantasy fiction of our time.  The writings of Tolkien go deeper than the pages.  In a more comprehensive look at Lord of the Rings, the attraction to readers is the belief in an unreal world.  What Tolkien called “Secondary World”.  A “Secondary World” is one that exists only in the mind, cannot be seen or found. Pure imagination.  Readers who enter the “Secondary World” or Middle Earth, probably liked where they were, but were bound by the physics of the real world.  Interesting stuff don’t you think?  The ultimate secret to Tolkien’s appeal (which is a mystery) is the quality of imagination.  For example Ents, nobody talked about Ents before Tolkien, as its not a traditional piece of literature, but today most people understand what it is.  A more obvious example would be the Hobbits.  Hobbit in terms of the word sounds like a traditional English word, but is in fact nonsense.  J.R.R. Tolkien made the whole thing up.  Very few writers can invent a notion which becomes recognised by the whole world.

It was the countryside just outside of Birmingham where Tolkien discovered his love of nature and this can be seen prominently throughout his descriptions of Middle Earth.  J.R.R. Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic, speaking Latin he developed this into an interest into languages and teachings.  Middle Earth was a melting pot in Tolkien’s mind even as a school boy at King Edwards in Birmingham.  Ironically like a plant, this idea grew, flourished and over spilled onto pages and pages of writing.

The fantasy genre has been around since the dawn of writing itself.  Since Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey to the old English myth of Beowulf and even in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Dream.  The genre has been evolving.  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is considered the father of modern fantasy with over 150million readers spanning generations upon generations.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is the second highest selling set of books of all time after the Bible.  And was made into a set of films which is still considered one of the most ambitious film projects of all time, having spent over $285 million to create the finished project.  It also claimed a number of academy awards that rival Ben Hur and Titanic.

World wide, the Lord of Rings raked in  $2,915,155,189 in at the Box Office.  All from one mind. The mind of Tolkien.

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