Neverending story
THE Lord of the Rings is one of the world’s most famous and enduring literary sagas, aided and abetted by director Peter Jackson’s trilogy, among the most successful movie franchises of all time. It long ago superseded its progenitor, The Hobbit, which was published in 1937.
The Lord of the Rings was written when the publishers of The Hobbit requested a follow-up to the hugely successful children’s tale, but writing it was a less than smooth process for Tolkien. He toiled on The Lord of the Rings for over a decade, beginning before World War II and finishing his magnum opus years after it, keeping his son Christopher informed by letter of his painfully slow progress.
