Notably, Tolkien claimed that this was not his first effort in invented languages.

In a letter of 1954 Tolkien gave orc as " demon " and claimed he used the word because of its " phonetic suitability " — its similarity to various equivalent terms in his Middle-earth languages.

In keeping with the conceit that The Lord of the Rings was derived from the translated Red Book of Westmarch, Tolkien claimed to have translated all its Westron words into English — including the names of characters.

Tolkien, in his essay " On Fairy Stories ", claimed that no individual fantasy story can be successful without maintaining an " inner consistency of reality ".

" 4. hobbit — J. R. R. Tolkien modestly claimed not to have coined this word, although the Supplement to the OED credited him with the invention of it in the absence of further evidence.

Similar to the central concept of The Lord of the Rings, which J. R. R. Tolkien claimed was a translation of a real tome in his keeping ( the Red Book of Westmarch ), The Death Gate Cycle claims to be documentation of the events revolving around Death's Gate, authored after the fact by its primary characters.

It is claimed that more than five million MP3s have been downloaded from him ; over one million of those were for " Tolkien ( The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ).

It can be found, most notably, in Tolkien's book titled Tree and Leaf, and in other places ( including the collections The Tolkien Reader, Poems & Stories, A Tolkien Miscellany, and Tales from the Perilous Realm ).

This concept, which shares much in common with phenomenology, Tolkien calls " recovery ," in the sense that one's unquestioned assumptions might be recovered and changed by an outside perspective.

The general form — that of a journey into strange lands, told in a light-hearted mood and interspersed with songs — may be following the model of The Icelandic Journals by William Morris, an important literary influence on Tolkien.

Tolkien, however, is not simply skimming historical sources for effect: linguistic styles, especially the relationship between the modern and ancient, has been seen to be one of the major themes explored by the story.

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

The heirs of Tolkien, including his son Christopher Tolkien, filed suit against New Line Cinema in February 2008 seeking payment of profits and to be " entitled to cancel ... all future rights of New Line ... to produce, distribute, and / or exploit future films based upon the Trilogy and / or the Films ... and / or ... films based on The Hobbit.

But the decision to use Old Norse names came to have far-reaching consequences in the composition of The Lord of the Rings ; in 1942, Tolkien decided that the work was to be a purported translation from the fictional language of Westron, and in the English translation Old Norse names were taken to represent names in the language of Dale.

Language invention had always been tightly connected to the mythology that Tolkien developed, as he found that a language could not be complete without the history of the people who spoke it, just as these people could never be fully realistic if imagined only through the English language and as speaking English.

A natural consequence of this was that these " new " constructed languages had to be worked out by Tolkien in some details.

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 ".

It has three gates, including the one Tolkien described and two which cannot be closed, to allow those playing as invading forces to easily enter the stronghold.

Tolkien once wrote that he " did not intend the steed of the Witch-king to be what is now called a ' pterodactyl '", while acknowledging that it was " obviously ... pterodactylic and owes much " to the " new ... mythology of the ' Prehistoric '", and might even be " a last survivor of older geological eras.

The physical nature of Gondor is most prominently illustrated by the maps for The Lord of the Rings and Unfinished Tales made by Christopher Tolkien on the basis of his father's sketches, and can be supplemented by several geographical accounts such as The Rivers and Beacon-Hills of Gondor and Cirion and Eorl.

In the narrative of The Lord of the Rings, the westward target of the road appears as Min-Rimmon, but elsewhere it is stated that the valley ended at Nardol, where the quarries were located, and Christopher Tolkien showed that the former statement may be erroneous.

First to be introduced were their northern descendants — the " Rangers ", and the southern people appeared when Tolkien pondered in 1939 over the course of the narrative following the Council of Elrond.

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.

The physical appearance of the valley of Rivendell may be based upon the Lauterbrunnental in Switzerland, where J. R. R. Tolkien had hiked in 1911.

However, Christopher Tolkien notes in Unfinished Tales that the assumption Radagast failed in his task may not be entirely accurate considering that he was specifically chosen by Yavanna, and he may have been assigned to protect the flora and fauna of Middle-earth, a task that would not end with the defeat of Sauron and the end of the War of the Ring.

" Edoras " is Old English for " enclosures ", which Tolkien held to be a translation of an unknown Rohirric name of the same meaning.

Tolkien says both " the Nine the nazgûl keep " and that Sauron had gathered the Nine to himself, though in the latter case his meaning may be metaphorical.

Jacob Grimm in his Deutsches Wörterbuch deplored the " unhochdeutsch " form Elf, borrowed " unthinkingly " from the English, and Tolkien was inspired by Grimm to recommend reviving the genuinely German form in his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings ( 1967 ) and Elb, Elben was consequently reintroduced in the 1972 German translation of The Lord of the Rings.

In the 1939 lecture, Tolkien introduced the term " fantasy " in a sense of " higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so ( when achieved ) the most potent ".

Tolkien argues that suspension of disbelief is only necessary when the work has failed to create secondary belief.

Tolkien writes that Smaug's rage was the kind which " is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy lose something they have long had but never before used or wanted.

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 ).

Clearly, Tolkien knew when firearms were invented, but he deliberately set out to write a lighthearted fantasy tale disregarding any consideration of historical accuracy.

The need for a clearer image of the southern lands arose when Tolkien came to plan the narrative after the halt at Lothlórien.

The notion that the Third Age lasted " about 3000 years " was first written down when Tolkien began to sketch out the history of Númenor and Westlands.

This solution occurred to Tolkien in 1942, when he was searching for an explanation of the Eddaic names of the dwarves already published in The Hobbit.

In 1914 when he was studying at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Tolkien wrote a poem The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star which was inspired by the " Crist " poem of Cynewulf.

J. R. R. Tolkien mentions this plant when he describes spring in Ithilien:

* J. R. R. Tolkien uses the king in the mountain in various places in his legendarium: the form of the Dead Men of Dunharrow, the armies and king of Númenor who are trapped by the Valar when Númenor is destroyed, and in the Second Prophecy of Mandos which states that the dead heroes Túrin and Beren would return to help to defeat Morgoth at the end of times.

She first met Tolkien in that year, when he and his younger brother Hilary moved into the same boarding house.

Tolkien was buried with her when he died twenty-one months later.

Shippey quickly developed an affinity for Old English, Old Norse, German and Latin ( like Tolkien ) and playing rugby ( like Tolkien ), and he was able to afford The Lord of the Rings when he won a school contest.

The second account belongs, according to Christopher Tolkien to the late writings, undertaken well after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, when Tolkien turned to exploring the early history of Gondor and Rohan.

She discovered heroic fantasy fiction while in college, “ I read Tolkien when it made its first big sweep in the colleges back in 1966.

Many famous writers, past and present, are connected with Headingley: Arthur Ransome, best known perhaps for the children's classic Swallows and Amazons, was born there, J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, lived there when he worked at the university, playwright Alan Bennett once lived over a butcher's shop ( now a dry cleaner's ) opposite the Three Horseshoes and TV writer Kay Mellor lives in Weetwood today.

The story has some inconsistencies when compared with The Silmarillion, and at points there are gaps and multiple versions: this is because Tolkien never really finished the story during his lifetime, and his son Christopher Tolkien had to choose from all the work to create a consistent narrative for The Silmarillion.

However, while Tolkien stated that female dwarves are rare, and disguise themselves as male when they must travel, female Discworld dwarfs are common, but are traditionally indistinguishable from males at all times.

An important line of demarcation came when Lampoon editors Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard wrote the Tolkien parody Bored of the Rings.