Where did Tolkien start writing 'The Hobbit'?

Answer 1

JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and did not copy from any source. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have roots in Norse Mythology and many aspects of the stories are based upon the religion of Germanic and Norse myth and legend.

Answer 2

After having written The Hobbit, Tolkien wanted to explore this new world in greater depth. As a lover of language and history, he felt that England didn't have a sufficient history of it's own, at least from the standpoint of true Anglican (read: Anglo-Saxon) culture. All of the mythology and history was absorbed by the Normans and changed to reflect their Christian ideals.

Drawing on his own experiences and knowledge, he set about creating an entire world that predated our own, and used his own love of language to give it life. Every name means something. Every word created to convey a purpose. It's beautiful, really.

Answer 3

He had been asked by his publisher to write Hobbit sequels.

Finally he got the idea to base the sequels on the mysterious ring found by Bilbo and his stories of Elvish mythology (later published as The Silmarillion by his son Christopher).

The story started out much like the Hobbit, but eventually expanded into six sequels that gradually darkened as the Elvish mythology (written while recovering from WW1 wounds) was incorporated and WW2 began.

After the war, because of British paper rationing his publisher decided to print the Lord of the Rings as three volumes instead of the six it was written as.

Answer 4

Tolkien wrote The Hobbit while he was serving as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. It suppposedly began when he idly wrote 'hobbit' on an exam paper he was grading. It was in existence by late 1932 when it was read by C.S. Lewis, but was not yet complete.