The Hobbit at 80: much more than a childish prequel to The Lord of the Rings | Books | The Guardian

While we can point to other authors who played a part in creating the genre of heroic fantasy - from the epics such as Homer's Odyssey and the Scandinavian myths, through to Lewis Carroll and Lord Dunsany, to Conan creator Robert E Howard and Fritz Leiber, whose fantasy duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser debuted in 1939, two years after The Hobbit - the themes and tropes laid down by Tolkien continue to shape fantasy to this day. A quest. An artefact of power. An unlikely or unwilling hero. Fantastical races of elves and dwarves, orcs and goblins. Dragons. Monstrous spiders. The shadow of profound evil falling across a pastoral, peaceful, medieval world. Fantasy may have evolved a lot since Tolkien's day, but these building blocks can still be seen in most contemporary novels in the genre.