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 published in three volumes. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series "The History of Middle-earth", edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien. From around 1936, Tolkien began to extend this framework to include the tale of "The Fall of Númenor", which was inspired by the legend of Atlantis. Tolkien had appointed his son Christopher to be his literary executor, and he (with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, later a well-known fantasy author in his own right) organized some of this material into a single coherent volume, published as "The Silmarillion" in 1977. It received the Locus