J. R. R. Tolkien villain, Gilles de Retz. Incidents in both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are similar in narrative and style to the novel, and its overall style and imagery have been suggested as an influence on Tolkien. Tolkien was inspired by early Germanic, especially Old English, literature, poetry, and mythology, which were his chosen and much-loved areas of expertise. These sources of inspiration included Old English literature such as "Beowulf", Norse sagas such as the "Volsunga saga" and the "Hervarar saga", the "Poetic Edda", the "Prose Edda", the "Nibelungenlied", and numerous other culturally related works. Despite the similarities of
J. R. R. Tolkien this origin of the name has not been proven. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, "née" Suffield (1870–1904). The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, who was born on 17 February 1894. As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a large baboon spider