Influences on Tolkien

**Tolkien influences timeline**
Date	Influences	Elements
c. 1900	First World War Battle of the Somme Tanks	Mordor Metal dragons at Gondolin
	Edwardian adventure stories	English Hobbits travel Past is mysteriously alive
	Victorian era	Bag End, Hobbit lifestyle
	Modern literature William Morris Rider Haggard's She	Dead Marshes, Mirkwood Saruman shrivels, dies
c. 1800	Antiquarianism	Poems, maps, scripts, artwork, genealogy
c. 1600	Shakespeare Macbeth	Prophecy of Witch-King's death
c. 1400	Late Medieval	Cosmology, magic, named weapons, heraldry, interlaced narrative
c. 1000	Early Medieval Crist I Beowulf Sigelwara	Eärendil, light Elves, Ents, Orcs; Rohan Silmarils, Balrogs, Harad
c. 400	Romano-British Temple of Nodens	Rings of Power; Dwarves
c. 100	Christianity The One God The Devil	Eru Ilúvatar Melkor/Morgoth
c. 400 BC	Classical era Atlantis Ring of Gyges Orpheus and Eurydice Oedipus Prometheus	Númenor The One Ring Beren and Lúthien Túrin Turambar Fëanor
c. 1000 BC	Bronze to Iron Age Uffington White Horse Hallstatt culture	Rohan's horse-culture Barrow-wight's treasure
c. 5000 BC	Neolithic Pile Houses of Europe Barrows	Esgaroth (Lake-town) Barrow-downs
150 mya	Jurassic Pterosaurs	The Nazgûl's Fell beasts

J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences including language, Christianity, mythology, archaeology, ancient and modern literature, and personal experience. He was inspired primarily by his profession, philology; his work centred on the study of Old English literature, especially Beowulf, and he acknowledged its importance to his writings.

He was a gifted linguist, influenced by Germanic, Celtic, Finnish, Slavic, and Greek language and mythology. His fiction reflected his Christian beliefs and his early reading of adventure stories and fantasy books. Commentators have attempted to identify many literary and topological antecedents for characters, places and events in Tolkien's writings. Some writers were certainly important to him, including the Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris, and he undoubtedly made use of some real place-names, such as Bag End, the name of his aunt's home.

Tolkien stated that he had been influenced by his childhood experiences of the English countryside of Warwickshire and its urbanisation by the growth of Birmingham, and his personal experience of the First World War.