The Tolkien family went through a time of poverty. The situation became worse in 1904, when Mabel Tolkien was told that she had diabetes. During that time, diabetes was incurable. She died on 15 October 1904. J.R.R. Tolkien and his brother were taken over by Father Francis.
J.R.R. Tolkien made his name as an author when his book The Hobbit was published. It all began when he engaged in the soul-destroying task of remarking examination papers. He discovered that one candidate had left one paper of an answer-book blank. On this page, he wrote “ In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”.
Tolkien became interested and decided to find out what a Hobbit was, what sort of hole it lived in, why it lived in a hole, etc. He started to write a tale about hobbits, with the help of the information he had gathered together. In 1936, an incomplete typescript of the tale was given to Susan Dagnall, an employee of the publishing firm of George Allen and Unwin. She asked Tolkien to finish it, and presented the complete story to Stanley Unwin, the chief of the firm. In 1937, the story was published and Tolkien named the story The Hobbit. It became so successful that Stanley Unwin asked for a sequel to The Hobbit.
It took twelve years for Tolkien to write the sequel, The Lord of the Rings, to The Hobbit, but was not published until he came near the age of retirement. The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, were published in 1954, and the year that followed The Return of the King, the last volume of The Lord of the Rings, was published.
The Lord of the Rings has really become a success all over the world. The Lord of the Rings is not only a book, but also a film. People either read the book or watch the movie, or both of them. I have not read the book yet, but I have watched the first part of The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring. I thought the film was very good and decided to read the book too. I have read The Hobbit, which I thought really captured my imagination.
Many people say that a film of a book is not as good, and I fully agree, because the story in the book is told in more detail and a lot of suspense is created. Since films cannot be too long, they need to shorten the story, which makes it not as entertaining and exciting as the story in the book. When you read a book, you often make up your own characters and environment in your mind. You become very disappointed when you watch the film, because it is not like what you have always been thinking of. The characters and environment look different. The story has been shortened and it is not as entertaining and exciting. Many scenes have been taken away, and that makes you annoyed.
I do not recommend people to watch a film of a book ( if you have read the book), because it destroys the whole thing. But there are some exceptions, for example, The Lord of the Rings. Even if the book is better than the film, it is worth watching anyway. The Two Towers, the second volume of the book, has its first performance at cinema on 18 December. I will definately go and watch the film. There are people, who are already waiting outside the cinema to buy tickets for the film. It proves that it is worth watching after all.
