Toklien with a big smile on his face: "There was a page on this particular paper left blank. Glorious!" The unparalleled enthusiasm an artist has, when they see a an empty space where they can create.
Sorry to be that guy, but he actually invented middle-earth before writing the Hobbit, growing from his constructed languages and imagining a world where they were spoken. The Hobbit wasn't originally set in this world, it was just supposed to be an independent fairy tale until he started writing the lord of the rings where he retroactively made them the same world, albeit in different ages
@@conordrake2986 I've heard that his oldest scribblings regarding Middle-Earth, the first drafts of The Fall of Gondolin, were literally written in the trenches during WW1.
@@alvedonaren I don't know if that's true but it would make sense to me if it was. Tolkien saw first hand the horrors of war and the destruction it brings so it would make sense that he'd write about war bringing about the devastating end to a great civilization.
During World War 2 when paper was most scarce, Tolkien did some of the drafting of Lord of the Rings literally across the written on pages of examinations too, not just the blank pages as usual. Imagine your test being used for drafting of a landmark piece of writing of the century.
Imagine being the student that left that blank page. You’d have likely thought your Professor was making it personal, calling you a slur you had never heard before.
Apparently, Ian McKellan based his performance of Gandalf on Tolkien himself. Having finally watched this interview (or any interview with him), I can definitely see the similarities, specifically in the voice.
He was a monumental genius. To have conceived and written not just "The Hobbit" but the Lord of the Rings trilogy---- JRR Tolkien has always been one of my most admired writers and creative artists, ever since I discovered him back in the 1960s as a teenager.
@@holliswilliams8426 playing pretend here, of course, what if that paper ended up in a Tolkien-focused collection? And you'd end up looking at it online, and see your name on the first page (what would that grade have been?). I would put this info on my CV!
Ive got to say I had no idea what this guy was about until I saw the movie "tolkien". Everyone, EVERYONE needs to go watch that movie. Shows him and his buddies from a young age, then going through war together and during the war he sees visions of characters from lord of the rings... like they actually use sfx and put them in the movie. Its a tear jerker
It's about time our scholars and historians set Tolkien next to the classic myth makers of old such as Virgil, Hesiod, Homer, Plato, Ovid, Hafiz, Vyasa, Wu Cheng'en, Snorri Sturluson, Thomas Malory, and Dante Alighieri when compared to the study of the great sagas, fables, and epic poems of ancient days.
considering this probably took place in the 30s and what Tolkien wrote had no significance at the time, I'm going to assume that it doesn't exist anymore
Tolkien wrote himself in as Tom Bombadil is a great theory, a timeless character that was there to see the first raindrop fall (as he wrote it), a character that does not get involved in power struggles but merely pays witness.
In the original draft; Bilbo killed Smaug! The Ring was just to get the Hobbit out of troublesome spots n Thorin was the name of the Wizard at one point!
For all you perfectionist planners out there, still stuck on the outline of your novel 5 years later, THIS is the only video you need on 'How To Write That Novel'. Now stop reading and start writing!
Wow… imagine if that one student hadn’t been sloppy/lazy Tolkien would never have written that line. The father of all fantasy would not have existed… Butterfly effect
He would still have all of the necessary components to make such a story in his mind so we probably could of just got something about an elf in a tree instead
that blank page didnt actually start all of this. Tolkien starting The Hobbit was inevitable, and that situation was just a little push in the back for him
@@quintincastro7430 i feel he was already telling this story to his children, partially? the paper is just a pointwhen he decided to pen it, rather than a day or week later
Marking exam scripts is extremely tedious because they all basically the same, the only ones you remember are where the person literally wrote nothing and left some blank pages with bits of nonsense on them.
He scribbled the first line of The Hobbit on a blank page in a paper he was grading? Was the paper returned to the student along with the scribble? I'd love to have that page!
So whoever left a blank piece of paper in with their work triggered something in Tolkien. Wonder who it was? I also wonder if that hadn't been left there, would he still have had the same 'spark' of creativity at that moment?
In England the ground gloor is basically ground zero. Going down -1 -2 -3 etc going up 1 2 3 etc. In America ground floor is also first floor because they're dumb
