Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd of January, 1892 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, but at the age of four he and his brother were taken back to England by their mother. After his father's death the family moved to Sarehole, on the south-eastern edge of Birmingham. Tolkien spent a happy childhood in the countryside and his sensibility to the rural landscape can clearly be seen in his writing and his pictures.


His mother died when he was only twelve and both he and his brother were made wards by the local priest and sent to King Edward's School, Birmingham, where Tolkien shined in his classical work.  After completing a First in English Language and Literature at Oxford, Tolkien married Edith Bratt.

In 1920 Tolkien was appointed Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds which was the beginning of a distinguished academic career. Meanwhile Tolkien wrote for his children and told them the story of The Hobbit which first introduced Gollum. It was his publisher, Stanley Unwin, who asked for a sequel to The Hobbit and gradually Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, the huge story that carried on the tales of the hobbits and other creatures which took twelve years to complete. 

The original 1937 version was quite different in describing Gollum and relating how Bilbo gained possession of the ring.

Originally, The ring was a reward for winning the riddle game, as a "present" to Bilbo.  Gollum was upset when he could not give the ring to Bilbo because he could not find it, and showed him out instead.

Gollum was meant to be a simple character with no real future development but as Tolkien wrote the sequel to The Hobbit, he realized that the ring had to be very special to Gollum and needed to have an evil power over its owner.  At first he tried to create elaborate explanations to explain why Gollum would give the ring away, but it was not very believable.  He eventually decided to re-write the riddle chapter into the version that is read today.

To explain the change, he said that The Hobbit was written from Bilbo's diary, and Tolkien had only just then found out that Bilbo had lied, and had 'fixed' the newer additions.   So in the story, Bilbo at first makes no mention of the ring when telling the Dwarves and Gandalf what happened.  Then, after the Dwarves saw him disappear, he tells them the second lie, about 'winning' the ring in the contest, that was in the earlier editions of The Hobbit.  It is only in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings that the "real" story is told for the first time.