J.R.R. Tolkien, also known as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd of January, 1892. He was an English poet, writer, philologist, and university professor. He is a recognised author of some of the most famous fantasy works. From 1925 to sometime around 1945, JRR Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.
He was also a Merton Professor of English and Literature at the same university from 1945 to around 1959. His closest friend was C.S. Lewis and the two were members of the informal literacy discussion group popularly called the Inklings. On the 28th of March, 1972, Tolkien was selected by Queen Elizabeth II for an honorary position. Tolkien contributed immeasurably to all the activities he was engaged in before he died on the 2nd of September, 1973.
After the passing on of this great man, his son, Christopher, published different sequences of his works based on the broad notes and unpublished document of Tolkien himself. These included The Sil-mar-illion. The Sil-mar-illion and some others of his works shaped a joined body of poems, invented languages, tales, fictional histories and literary essays on a fantasy planet identified as Arda. Between the years 1951 and 1955, JRR Tolkien integrated the term Legen-arium into a bigger part of some of these writings.
Many writers had written and published fantasy works before Tolkien but the huge success of some of his works were directly connected with a famous renaissance of the genre. This is why Tolkien is universally referred to as the father of the contemporary fantasy literature. In reality, he was actually ranked sixth on a large list of fifty greatest British writers since the year 1945. He was positioned by Forbes as the fifth top earning deceased celebrity in the year 2009.
Looking back at the past of Tolkien, it is discovered that he had his roots in the minor part of Saxony and many of his paternal ancestors were well-known to be craftsmen. The name, Tolkien, which was his real surname, is said to have derived from the German expression ‘tollkühn’, which can be interpreted as foolhardy. JRR Tolkien was born in the land of Bloemfontein to Mabel and Arthur Reuel Tolkien. He contributed enormously to literature and arts throughout his lifetime.
His most famous works, made even more colossally so with the recent adaptation to film, are of course those of The Lord of the Rings. So why are we including a piece on J.R.R. here on this blog concerning Cooks Green Holiday Cottage and things related to our humble self catering accommodation? Well, we sit in the heart of the inspiration for his fantasy world, ‘Middle Earth’. –Tolkien actually lived just a few doors down from us after he penned his most famous works. He rented a cottage here in Apperley in order to ‘live in the world he’d created’ and walk in the countryside of which he’d written about. His ‘Misty Mountains’ are actually the Malvern Hills, viewable from here, and so the world of which he wrote is all around our very own Cooks Green Self Catering Holiday Cottage.