The writing of The Silmarillion was started by Tolkien during the First World War and continued until his death in 1972. It provides a great deal of the back-drop to his other popular novels, [[The Hobbit]] and [[The Lord of The Rings]]. Originally conceived as a setting for the Elvish languages of Quenya and Sindarin that Tolkien had devised The Silmarillion can be seen as the 'Old Testament' to the Lord of the Rings' Gospels. Tolkien was first and foremost a philologist, which is a historian of languages and their development so the creation of his own languages was a development of this. | The writing of The Silmarillion was started by Tolkien during the First World War and continued until his death in 1972. It provides a great deal of the back-drop to his other popular novels, [[The Hobbit]] and [[The Lord of The Rings]]. Originally conceived as a setting for the Elvish languages of Quenya and Sindarin that Tolkien had devised The Silmarillion can be seen as the 'Old Testament' to the Lord of the Rings' Gospels. Tolkien was first and foremost a philologist, which is a historian of languages and their development so the creation of his own languages was a development of this. |