* J. R. R. Tolkien begins writing The Book of Lost Tales ( the first version of The Silmarillion ); thus Middle-earth is first chronicled this year.

For example, the Narn i Hîn Húrin, which Christopher Tolkien dates to the period after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, has this introductory note: " Here begins that tale which Ǽlfwine made from the Húrinien.

1910: J. R. R. Tolkien begins to construct his first Elfin tongue while he is at the King Edward's School, Birmingham.

Tolkien begins with an overview of the terms " British ", " Celtic ", " Germanic ", " Saxon ", " English " and " Welsh ", explaining the latter term's etymology in walha.

Tolkien was compulsive in his writing, his revision, his desire for perfection in form and in the " reality " of his invented world, its languages, its chronologies, its existence.

Tolkien was among the pioneers of the genre that we would now call fantasy writing.

Tolkien, an accomplished Beowulf scholar, claims the poem to be among his " most valued sources " in writing The Hobbit.

C. S. Lewis, friend of Tolkien ( and later author of The Chronicles of Narnia between 1949 – 1964 ), writing in The Times reports:

When writing Common Eldarin forms, Tolkien often used the macron to indicate long vowels.

When writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s Tolkien gave the name Gandalf to the leader of the Dwarves, the character later called Thorin Oakenshield.

There he learnt a lot about writing and editing, and later admitted of Tolkien's influence, " to be successful in fantasy, you have to take the measure of Tolkien — work with his strengths and away from his weaknesses ".

Tolkien believed he had invented the word " hobbit " when he began writing The Hobbit ( it was revealed years after his death that the word predated Tolkien's usage, though with a different meaning ).

However, Tolkien claims that he started The Hobbit suddenly, without premeditation, in the midst of rating a set of student essay exams, writing on a blank piece of paper: " In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit ".

While The Hobbit introduced this comfortable race to the world, it is only in writing The Lord of the Rings that Tolkien developed details of their history and wider society.

Based upon long-foreseen conceptions, the history and geography of Gondor were developed in stages, as a part of the major extension of his legendarium that Tolkien undertook during the writing of The Lord of the Rings.

Next element to be introduced was the " Land of Seven Streams "; Tolkien was hesitant for some time about its relation to other places, writing at different times that it was located north or south of Black Mountains, within the Land of Ond or separate from it.

When writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien continued many of the themes he had set up in The Hobbit.

At the time Tolkien was writing this, the name Finrod referred to the third son of Finwë, and this Finrod had a son Inglor Felagund.

But in the writing of the long Narn i Chîn Húrin, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a new version of the battle which postdates both aforementioned accounts.

Tolkien, who purchased a volume of Thompson's works in 1913-1914, and later said that it was an important influence on his own writing.

Christopher Tolkien has documented the history of the writing of the Middle-earth stories in as much detail as his father documented the fictional history of Middle-earth itself.

Unlike The Silmarillion, for which the narrative fragments were modified to connect into a consistent and coherent work, the Unfinished Tales are presented as Tolkien left them, with little more than names changed ( the author having had a confusing habit of trying out different names for a character while writing a draft ).

Michael D. C. Drout's " Tolkien's Prose Style and its Literary and Rhetorical Effects ", featured in the academic journal Tolkien Studies, published by West Virginia University Press, analyzes Tolkien's writing style and deduces influence from and parallels with King Lear.

Tolkien, and Margaret Atwood all acknowledging the importance of the work to their own and others ' writing.

For a time, Tolkien considered writing a sequel to The Lord of the Rings, called The New Shadow, which would have taken place in Eldarion's reign, and in which Eldarion deals with his people turning to evil practices ; however, Tolkien later dropped the idea.

There is a story written there known as the " Tale of Qorinómi " about the love between him and Urwen ( Arien ), though in the commentary it is said that Tolkien never got to writing it.

* The Red Book of Westmarch and a surviving copy of it called The Thain's Book, portions of which were " translated " by J. R. R. Tolkien into his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien also physically fabricated several pages of another fictional book, the Book of Mazarbul.

From Tolkien to the modern day, authors in this genre tend to create their own worlds where they set multi-tiered narratives such as the Belgariad, Malloreon, Wheel of Time, Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Black Company, The Sword of Truth, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn.

Tolkien, by science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick, by central figures of Western literature like Leo Tolstoy, Virgil and The Brontë sisters, and including feminist writers like Virginia Woolf, by children's literature like Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows and The Jungle Book, by Norse mythology, and by books from the Eastern tradition such as the Tao Te Ching.

In his role as " translator " of the Red Book of Westmarch, Tolkien devised a strict English translation, Samwís Gamwich, which develops into Samwise Gammidgy and eventually comes to Samwise Gamgee in modern English.

The most Dwarf-centric story from The Book of Lost Tales, " The Nauglafring ", was not redrafted to fit with the later positive portrayal of the dwarves from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, nor other events in the Silmarillion, leading Christopher Tolkien significantly to rewrite it with input from Guy Gavriel Kay in preparation for publication.

There is a poem by Tolkien dated to 1914 entitled " The Voyage of Eärendel the Evening Star " ( published in The Book of Lost Tales 2 267 – 269 ).

Dragons are already present in The Book of Lost Tales, the earliest Middle-earth-related narratives written by Tolkien, starting in 1917.

The provenance of the story is sometimes explained internally, as in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, which depicts the Red Book of Westmarch ( a story-internal version of the book itself ) as a history compiled by several of the characters.

Tolkien had studied philology at Oxford and eventually became a professor, he was very familiar with the Red Book of Hergest which is kept at the Bodleian on behalf of Jesus College.

Tolkien later created his own fictional Red Book of Westmarch telling the story of The Lord of the Rings.

J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, stayed in Great Haywood during the winter of 1916 / 17 and in his story ' The Tale of the Sun and the Moon ' ( The Book of Lost Tales 1 ) he writes about a gnome called Gilfanon who owned an ancient house "... the House of a Hundred Chimneys, that stands nigh the bridge of Tavrobel ".

In The Book of Lost Tales ( published in two parts ), the young Tolkien originally intended Eärendil, then spelled Earendel, to be the first of the Half-elven.

There is an early poem by Tolkien, entitled " Kortirion ", several versions of which can be found in The Book of Lost Tales, Volume I.

Tolkien ( found in The Fall of Gondolin, from The Book of Lost Tales, circa 1917 — the first tale of Middle-earth to be written in full ), Orcs were made of stone and slime through the sorcery of Morgoth:

The inscription in Book X reads: " In this book are given many of the later writings of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien concerning the history of the Elder Days from the Music of the Ainur to the Hiding of Valinor ; here much is told of Sun and the Moon ; of the immortal Eldar and the death of the Atani ; of the beginning of the Orcs and of the evil power of Melkor, the Morgoth, the Black Foe of the World.

The inscription in Book XI reads: " In this book are recorded the last writings of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien concerning the wars of Beleriand, here also is told the story of how Húrin Thalin brought ruin to the Men of Brethil, with much else concerning the Edain and Dwarves and the names of many peoples in the speech of the Elves.

The inscription in Book XII reads: " This is the last volume of the work of Christopher Tolkien in which he has collected a great part of all that his father John Ronald Reuel Tolkien wrote of Middle-earth and Valinor.

* Red Book of Westmarch, a fictional manuscript written by Hobbits, a conceit of author J. R. R. Tolkien to explain the source of his stories

The Great Eagles ruled by " Thorndor " already appeared in the first tale about Middle-earth that Tolkien wrote in late 1910s, The Fall of Gondolin, published in The Book of Lost Tales.

The Red Book of Westmarch ( sometimes Red Book of the Periannath, and The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings, also known as the Thain's Book after its principal version ) is a fictional manuscript written by hobbits, a conceit of author J. R. R. Tolkien to explain the source of his fantasy writings.