his mother, died when he was only 12 years old. All he was left was the idyllic picture of the rural countryside in his mind and catholic education he had been given by his mother. One more thing still remained unchanged – his passion for old books, classic languages and ancient myths. Due to that passion, he decided to study Old and Middle English and after finishing his studies and establishing his own family, he became a university teacher in Leeds. He mastered the subject with enthusiasm and it did not take long before he was given professorship of Anglo-Saxon in Oxford. Besides his work of a teacher and publishing critical essays, he devoted his life to creating his own fictional worlds and languages.
Tolkien wrote several books in genre of fantasy. First of all, it was The Silmarillion (published posthumously), which he himself appreciated the most. Fortunately, some of his other works were put into print with his own approval. Namely a modern fairy tale called The Hobbit and then, what was supposed to be its sequel, the above mentioned The Lord of the Rings. The former tells a story of the Halfling Bilbo and his 13 Dwarfish companions travelling to the Lonely Mountain in search of their stolen treasure, while the latter, in which I am interested, was more serious and complicated, aiming much further from many points of view. It could be comprehended only as an account of the journey of another Halfling, this time Bilbo's nephew Frodo, but it would probably miss the very important message it contains.
Some say that LotR is rather a sequel to The Silmarillion. Tolkien used the before created mythology as a setting for this adventurous saga, which means he reintroduced the fictional country called the Middle-Earth and mixed it with all the places and characters that derive their origin from The Hobbit. Once more we can meet all the fabulous creatures such as the Elves, the Dwarves , the Wizards, or the Eagles, but also the Orcs, the Trolls, the Werewolves, and of course Tolkien's little invention – the Hobbits. Now we encounter an important question: Why did the author set the story somewhere out of this world? Only to escape the reality and tell us a fairy tale to enlighten our hearts? Or, is there any relation to our lives and our existence on the Earth? We can guess and I am quite sure we will not find it as simple as a plain tale. It is obvious that our explanations will differ from one person to another, and I do not think there is only one right answer either.