At Oxford, Tolkien and writer C.S. Lewis founded the famous literary society The Inklings , comprised of a group of Oxford colleagues who met to critique one another’s writing and discuss other topics of interest.After the war, Tolkien had begun to construct the mythology, landscape and languages of the world of Middle-Earth. He wrote a few Middle-Earth stories in the next several years, but no novel was in the offing until the summer of 1928. He was grading test papers when he scribbled the words, “ In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit ” on a student’s blank answer sheet.The chairman of the publishing house Allen & Unwin gave the manuscript to his 10-year-old son , and the boy’s favorable review convinced him to publish Tolkien’s fantastic tale. On Sept. 21, 1937, the first copies of “The Hobbit,” subtitled “There and Back Again,” appeared in English bookstores. With its illustrations and maps drawn by Tolkien, the book gained immediate popularity. By Christmas the publisher had sold out of its first printing. The book crossed the pond in 1938 and the American version sold 3,000 copies in the first two months.After the first book’s popularity, Tolkien’s publishers demanded more. They were forced to wait for quite some time, but their patience paid off. The popularity of 1954 and 1955’s three-volume epic “ The Lord of the Rings ” far outpaced that of “The Hobbit.” Darker in tone than its predecessor, “The Lord of the Rings” concerns a quest to get rid of a magical ring once belonging to the evil Lord Sauron. Destroying the Ring will defeat Sauron forever, but he who bears the Ring must fight off the terrible temptation to claim the Ring’s power for his own.The books proved to be such a hit, in fact, that American publisher Ace released pirated paperback editions of the trilogy. After gaining wide appeal in the 1960s, “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy is ranked among the most-read literary works of the 20th century. Many of the fantasy novels written after the trilogy’s publication clearly owe a great debt to Tolkien.