Black riders, elves, hobbits, wizards, goblins, dwarfs and magical rings. That is the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the magical trilogy, Lord of the Rings.

When you first hear about Tolkien you probably think about a man in a suit of shining armor with a sword at the ready, but he really was a very normal person. Tolkien didn’t even intend for these books to make him any money, but they did anyway! In fact they helped him become a very famous author. Now lets look a little closer into the making of this magical series.

For years Tolkien and his fellow author C.S.Lewis had been friends, and in 1927 Tolkien enrolled Lewis into the Coal-biters club. Tolkien was already involved in this small club for writers. During the Coal-biters meetings, members read their writings aloud and shared their ideas with their family and friends.

It was during one of these meetings that Tolkien and Lewis made a bet. This bet was more like a writing project then a competition but either way it helped make both men quite famous. The bet involved each of them to pull a piece of paper out of a hat and on the paper there was a topic sentence,from that sentence they had to write a trilogy that was unlike any that was popular at that time. From that little bet came Lewis’s Space Trilogy about amazing adventures on different planets, as well as Tolkien’s great work.

Even right now J.R.R. Tolkien is receiving prizes because of the Trilogy that he wrote just because of a simple and friendly bet.

If you want to learn more about C.S.Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien and their works go to:
www.wikipedia.org and search for either of the writers.