Top 10 Epic Facts About J.R.R. Tolkien

His life was just as epic as his prose. Hey guys, I'm Rebecca from WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the top 10 epic facts about Tolkien. May it be a light for you in dark places. Before we begin, we publish new content every day, so be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos. That means we're looking at the most remarkable, astonishing and inspiring facts about the Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. Uh, Rebecca, I think you mean Tolkien. Have I been saying it wrong this whole time? Apparently so. Jeez, well I guess you know you're from WatchMojo UK. I am indeed. And guess what, Ashley, you have earned yourself some promo. Brilliant, okay, so if you're an anglophile, be sure to check out WatchMojo UK. Now let's get to that list. No, that's my line! Number 10. He was the life of the party. And the lecture. An Oxford philologist might not sound like a rowdy guest, but Tolkien was no wallflower. He had a close circle of companions and an incorrigible love of pranks. It's supposed to stick it in the ground. It does in the ground. Outside? That was your idea! He once attended a party dressed as a polar bear and would dress up as an Anglo-Saxon warrior, axe included, to chase after his bewildered neighbor. I don't know why he's so upset. It's only a couple of carrots. In lectures, he was no less theatrical, pulling out a small green shoe as proof of leprechauns. You found one. I told you. Or he'd just walk in, slam down his books, and bellow lines from Beowulf, turning the lecture room, in the words of one student, quote, into a mead hall. Number 9. He was a terror on the road. As a student, Tolkien once stole a bus to take his friends on a joyride. But he generally disliked motorized vehicles and only bought his first car in the 1930s. It might have been better had he stuck to his trusty bicycle. He was fearless behind the wheel and would speed into traffic with the cry, quote, charge them and they scatter. Unsurprisingly, he ended up driving Old Joe, as the car was named, right into a wall. On the bright side, his mishaps inspired him to write Mr. Bliss, a children's book about a man's misadventures by motorcar. Number 8. He wanted to create a new mythology for England. You'd think that writing one of the world's greatest novels would be enough. But Tolkien's ambitions were much bigger. There was this vacuum that Tolkien wanted to fill by inventing his own English mythology. He lamented that unlike Scotland, Ireland and Wales, England had no, stories of its own, bound up with its tongue and soil. Myths were important, he believed, because they refracted the divine light into, living shapes that move from mind to mind. With Middle-earth, he told one reader he aspired to, restore to the English an epic tradition, and present them with a mythology of their own. To that end, he created for Middle-earth an entire world history, laid out in painstaking and astonishing detail, in tales only published after his death. Number 7. He was obsessed with detail. A self-described, quote, pedant devoted to accuracy, Tolkien's obsession with detail was staggering. To bring Middle-earth to life, he did much more than fill it with people, places and history. He also created songs and languages. And he labored over even the smallest minutiae of Bilbo and Frodo's adventures, including Middle-earth's seasons, weather and geography. In fact, he obsessed over the phases of the moon, rewriting sections of the Lord of the Rings when he realized he'd made a mistake. It might have been obsessive, but his attention to detail is part of what makes the world he made so rich and compelling. Number 6. He was one of the legendary Inklings. We can thank this fellowship for modern fantasy literature. In the 1930s and 40s, the now legendary Inklings met regularly to read and discuss their works in progress. They included fantasy writers Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis, and of course, one John Ronald Rule Tolkien. On Thursday evenings, they met in Lewis's rooms, but on Tuesday afternoons, they could be found at the Eagle and Child pub, also known as the Bird and Baby. Tolkien's words weren't always well-received, with Inkling Hugo Dyson exclaiming, quote, ''Oh God, no more elves.'' ''Thought you wanted to see the Elves, Sam?'' But they shared a common aim, celebrating great literature and supporting one another in their own literary endeavors. Tolkien would go on to fictionalize the Inklings as the Notion Club in an unfinished novel later published in Sauron Defeated. Great minds seem to attract each other. Fellow Inkling and Oxford professor C.S. Lewis, best known for The Chronicles of Narnia, was one of Tolkien's closest friends, and rivals. They supported one another as they wrote their respective series, sharing drafts, and even basing characters on each other. Lewis modeled the space trilogy's Elwynn Ransom on Tolkien, and Tolkien drew on Lewis's booming voice for Treebeard. Tolkien's belief that myths expressed greater truths played a key role in converting Lewis to Christianity. Of course, they also had their differences. Lewis was Anglican, Tolkien Catholic, and Tolkien objected to Lewis's overt use of religious allegory. But he called Lewis's, ''sheer encouragement'' a, quote, ''unpayable debt.'' Tolkien wrote, quote, ''He was, for long, my only audience.'' Tolkien is often called the father of modern fantasy, and of high fantasy in particular. Of course, fantasy goes back to ancient times, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Ballad of Gilgamesh. But Tolkien really invented modern epic fantasy in its current form. Of course, this isn't to say that he invented fantasy per se. His own influences included the poems, fairy tales, and novels of George MacDonald and William Morris. Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery novels had been around since the late 1920s. But Tolkien's influence is undeniable. The Lord of the Rings has sold over 150 million copies, and has been translated into 38 languages. The Hobbit has sold another 100 million. His works had a, quote, ''strong impact'' on the development of dungeons and dragons, and on all sorts of high, low, and heroic fantasy to come. Without them, we wouldn't have the fantasy epics we know and love today. Before there was Klingon, Navi, and Valyrian, there was Quenya. We all have hobbies, but few of us can count among them the invention of new languages. Tolkien's love of languages led him to learn over a dozen, and become familiar with many more, all while creating new ones on the side. He got his start in his teens, drawing on Latin and Spanish to construct Nefarin. But his most developed languages were Quenya and Sindarin, influenced by Finnish and Welsh respectively. They were part of a family of elvish languages invented just for the fun of it. Since language and history walk hand in hand, Tolkien created Middle-earth to complete his languages rather than vice versa, giving them a mythology and a home. Tolkien's formative experiences during the First World War had a powerful impact on his writing, even as he avoided simple allegory. In 1915, he enlisted in the armed services, and a year later fought in the bloody Battle of the Somme. Due to poor health, he was soon sent home, but the effects of the war followed him. He started writing The Fall of Gondolin, his first tale set in Middle-earth, in an army barracks. The oppressive, quote, of war, its lasting trauma, and the importance of love and fellowship, would become central themes of The Lord of the Rings. Before we unveil our number one pick, here are some honorable mentions. Middle-earth has seen its own fair share of wars, but, quote, among the tales of sorrow and ruin Tolkien wrote, there were also stories of, quote, light that endures. When he was 16, Tolkien fell in love with Edith Bratt, but as she was three years older and a Protestant, his guardian forbade him from seeing her until he turned 21. So, on his 21st birthday, he asked her to marry him, leaving her fiancé she accepted, and became Edith Tolkien in 1916. One afternoon in 1917, with the Great War still wracking Europe, Edith danced and sang in a woodland glade, inspiring Tolkien's love story of Beren and the elf-maid Lúthien. The lovers' names appear below Tolkien and Edith's on their final resting place. So, did you guys learn anything? Actually, here's a question for you. Do any of you speak Tolkien's elvish languages? Ashley here is Welsh, and sometimes I swear to God, he's speaking Sindarin. Anyway, be sure to check out WatchMojo UK for all things British. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and check out these other videos over here. Toodle-oo!