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Christopher Tolkien: Hobbits
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Tolkien wrote so voluminously about Middle-earth that much of the back-story that originally had been part of the text of LOTR was moved out of his main storyline and into his prologue and appendices. This is particularly true for the Hobbits and for Aragorn.
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Tolkien never expected his fictional stories to become popular, but he was persuaded by a former student to publish a book he had written for his own children called The Hobbit in 1937. However, the book attracted adult readers as well, and it became popular enough for the publisher, George Allen & Unwin, to ask Tolkien to work on a sequel.
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Tolkien created his own mythology, the legends about the 'imaginary historical period' during all his life. He often refers to these legends in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - that's the prehistory of these stories. He didn't manage to prepare these legends for publication during his life and most of them were published posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien.
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According to legend, Tolkien wrote the sentence, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" on the back of an examination paper in 1930. This flash of inspiration gave rise to the children’s book The Little Hobbit.
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At C S Lewis's prompting, The Hobbit was developed from the bedtime stories Tolkien told his children. He submitted it to the publisher Stanley Unwin, who gave it to his ten-year-old son, Rayner, to read. Rayner's report was favourable and the book was published in 1937.
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"This is a delightful though slight addition to Tolkien's work for several reasons. Hurin is like an appetizer, a tasty tapas to get new readers ready for the heavy-duty feasting provided by far more elaborate and lengthy books such as The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy."
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