I just made some researches on J. R. R. Tolkien and found the story of his life so interesting and inspiring that I just wanted to share it with you all.

The popular fantasy novel The Hobbit was first published in 1937, and it is now recognized as a classic in literature. Tolkien’s son Christopher remembers when his father used to stand with his back to the fire in his small study in the house in North Oxford during their winter reads after tea in the evening and tell stories to him and his brother, and in particular when for the first time he started to tell the story of a small being with furry feet, the Hobbit.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” is the first line of the novel The Hobbit; it all began as a story told to his children.

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When Tolkien then began writing and was finished with the entire story, he managed to publish it, with the help of the British publisher Stanley Unwin, the first person who believed in his work and founder of the company George Allen and Unwin UK. Subsequently, Unwin urged Tolkien to write another book about hobbits, because the first edition was sold out. He answered that he didn’t know it would have been such a success and wondered for himself: what else can I write about hobbits? Three days later he wrote to Charles Furth, another member of Allen and Unwin: “I have written the first chapter of a new story about hobbits, A Long Expected Party.”

That, was the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings.