One of the most popular novels of all time—The Hobbit—practically began as a doodle, says Mark Atherton, author of There and Back Again, a new book on J.R.R. Tolkien and The Hobbit.
Atherton, a lecturer in English language and literature at Oxford University, says that in 1930, Tolkien was grading secondary school exam papers at his home in North Oxford, and he was bored. “So, on a blank sheet of exam paper he jotted down: ‘In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,’” says Atherton.
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