Their situations, problems, and lives reflect parts of the reader's own. The relationship between the simple, microcosmic hobbit and the macrocosmic War of the Rings reminds readers of their relationship to their own universe. The hobbit, like the majority of readers, is the most uncharacteristic type of hero, and his rise to heroic stature is that exceptional event that made early literature popular. Tolkien achieved such realism in characters by basing them partly on personal experience; and his ability to present the completely foreign world of Middle-earth with such believability is a result of his almost obsessive desire for detail.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 to Arthur and Mabel (Suffield) Tolkien in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where his father was in banking. He had one younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien. After Arthur Tolkien's death on 15 February 1896, the rest of the family relocated to live a modest life in Birmingham, England. The Tolkien children were first educated by their mother at home; Ronald (as he was called) entered King Edward's School in Birmingham in 1900. Mabel Tolkien's Catholicism was a family scandal that apparently left her on her own with the boys.
