Tolkien and Tiny But Mature Children

[lathspell]

He wrote The Hobbit during the mid-1930s

Actually you're wrong there, SoAR. Christopher Tolkien mentions in the little text afore of letter 9 in the Letters that 'Tolkien wrote the greater part of the Hobbit during his first seven years as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.' Relate this to the other mentioning of Christopher Tolkien in the text at Letter 7: that Tolkien became Professor at Oxford in 1925, and we can tell that Tolkien began writing the Hobbit in the 1920s. Idea's for books however take time to take shapes, thus it might well have been that Tolkien had or gained the idea for The Hobbit, or Hobbits in general, during or little after WWI.

I spoke to someone about the 'children thing' and he replied to my question of 'why so much children things?': 'Well, he wrote children's books and it might well be possible that therefore he took children so as the readers of his books could identify themselves with the characters.' I thought he had a point.

greetings,
lathspell