It's kind of amazing I think that the first edition of The Hobbit was published in the interwar year of 1937, 86 years ago. That same year, The Lord of the Rings was started and its first edition followed not long after WWIl in 1947. It was ten years between the completion of both books (although he began writing The Hobbit in 1930) How the world altered during that traumatic span of events, which obviously is reflected in the tone of the stories, and the need to find a complex worldbuilding resolution which contains hope, light and wonder from out of darkness and chaos; creation from desolation and destruction. I think that's why I find his books so compelling.
