John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford
The lord of the rings
The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what became his most famous work:
the epic novel The Lord of the
Rings (originally published in three volumes in 1954-1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the
primary
narrative and appendices for The Lord of the Rings, during which time he received the constant support of the
Inklings,
in particular his closest friend C. S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Both The Hobbit and The
Lord of
the Rings are set against the background of The Silmarillion, but in a time long after it.
Tolkien at first intended The Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in the style of The Hobbit, but it
quickly grew
darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to The Hobbit, it addressed an older audience,
drawing on the immense backstory of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which
eventually saw
posthumous publication in The Silmarillion and other volumes. Tolkien strongly influenced the fantasy genre
that
grew up after the book's success.
The Lord of the Rings became immensely popular in the 1960s and has remained so ever since, ranking as one of
the most
popular works of fiction of the 20th century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big
Read"
survey conducted by the BBC, The Lord of the Rings was found to be the UK's "Best-loved Novel".Australians
voted
The Lord of the Rings "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of
Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002
Tolkien was voted the 92nd "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC, and in 2004 he was voted 35th in
the
SABC3's Great South Africans, the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited to the
English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found The
Lord of
the Rings to be their favourite work of literature.
The Silmarillion
Tolkien wrote a brief "Sketch of the Mythology", which included the tales of Beren and Lúthien and of Túrin;
and that
sketch eventually evolved into the Quenta Silmarillion, an epic history that Tolkien started three times but
never
published. Tolkien desperately hoped to publish it along with The Lord of the Rings, but publishers (both
Allen & Unwin
and Collins) declined. Moreover, printing costs were very high in 1950s Britain, requiring The Lord of the
Rings to be
published in three volumes. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series The
History of
Middle-earth, edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien. From around 1936, Tolkien began to extend this
framework to
include the tale of The Fall of Númenor, which was inspired by the legend of Atlantis.
Tolkien appointed his son Christopher to be his literary executor, and he (with assistance from Guy Gavriel
Kay, later a
well-known fantasy author in his own right) organized some of this material into a single coherent volume,
published as
The Silmarillion in 1977. It received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel in 1978
Sir Peter Robert Jackson ONZ KNZM is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy, both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien
about lord of the rings & hobbit
Jackson won the rights to
film Tolkien's epic in 1997 after meeting with producer Saul
Zaentz. Originally working with
Miramax Films towards a two-film production, Jackson was later pressured to render the story as a single film,
and finally overcame a tight deadline by making a last-minute deal with New Line, who were keen on a trilogy.
Principal photography stretched from 11 October 1999 to 22 December 2000 with extensive location filming
across New
Zealand. With the benefit of extended post-production and extra periods of shooting before each film's
release, the
series met with huge success and sent Jackson's popularity soaring. The Return of the King itself met with
huge critical
acclaim, winning all eleven Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film
was the
first of the fantasy film genre to win the award for Best Picture and was the second sequel to win Best
Picture (the
first being The Godfather Part II). Jackson's mother, Joan, died three days before the release of the first
movie in the
trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. There was a special showing of the film after her funeral.Jackson's
involvement in the making of a film version of The Hobbit has a long and chequered history. In November 2006,
a letter from Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh stated that due to an ongoing legal dispute between Wingnut Films
(Jackson's
production company) and New Line Cinema, Jackson would not be directing the film. New Line Cinema's head
Robert
Shaye commented that Jackson "... will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working
at the
company ...". This prompted an online call for a boycott of New Line Cinema, and by August 2007 Shaye was
trying
to repair his working relationship.] On 18 December 2007, it was announced that Jackson and New Line Cinema
had
reached agreement to make two prequels, both based on The Hobbit, and to be released in 2012 and 2013 with
Jackson as a
writer and executive producer and Guillermo del Toro directing.
In early 2010, del Toro dropped out due to production delays and a month later Jackson was back in
negotiations to
direct The Hobbit and on 15 October he was finalised as the director with New Zealand confirmed as the
location a couple of weeks later.
The film started production on 20 March 2011. On 30 July 2012, Jackson announced on his Facebook page that the
two
planned Hobbit movies would be expanded into a trilogy. He wrote that the third film would not act as a bridge
between
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings films, but would continue to expand The Hobbit story by using material
found in the
Lord of the Rings Appendices.