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Tolkien is hobbit forming
-Anonymous American Graffito
One of the hallmarks of a professor is never knowing when to stop talking. Or writing. I had thought I had said all I wanted to about John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in my previous diary; and indeed I had thought I had my fill of middle-earth for the time being. But the comments raised a number of issues, and at least in my mind, reminded me of things that could have been said that would maybe have illuminated a bit of how LoTR (as I will continue to abbreviate it) came to be. So I thought for this installment I might say a few more things about the man who wrote the one book in the twentieth century which I feel the most confident will still be read 400 years later, assuming that there are people, and they are reading.
Middle-earth, is, after all, timeless earth. The three ages of middle-earth seem to last thousands of years each, but it seems very similar no matter how much time has passed. Just like a woods probably looks the same as it did five thousand years ago.
Let's walk a little further
