A guy who turned the literary world upside down, Lord of The Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien. The Silmarillion was actually his first adventure into middle earth even though it was published four years after he died. Friday is Read Tolkien Day so Teresa Strasser has five more things you didn't know about the epic author.
1. Author J. R. R. Tolkien is worth around 500 million dollars. Sadly, most of it came in after his death. According to Forbes, the movie franchise made almost 7 billion dollars, though the Tolkien estate has only seen a sliver of that precious gold.
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was actually supposed to be one giant book. The publishers decided it would be too pricey to print as a single book, so they split it into three with the influence of the publisher's son.
3. Despite the success of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Tolkien didn't quit his day job. He continued lecturing at Oxford University until he retired in 1959.
4. It wasn't enough to be fluent in several languages, he even created several of his own---elvish, dwarvish, and black speech to name a few.
5. He was a romantic. A testament to his love, after being married for fifty years, he was buried with his wife and had their tombstone engraved with "Beren" and "Luthien" star crossed lovers from his created world.
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