J. R. R. Tolkien publisher used the author's own cover art, maps, and full-page illustrations for the early editions of "The Hobbit". Much of his artwork was collected and published in 1995 as a book: "". The book discusses the paintings, drawings, and sketches of J.R.R. Tolkien and in total includes 200 reproductions of his art. In a 1951 letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien wrote about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "[t]he cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama".
J. R. R. Tolkien in a letter to his son Christopher: Tolkien was horrified by the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, referring to the scientists of the Manhattan Project as "these lunatic physicists" and "Babel-builders". During most of his own life conservationism was not yet on the political agenda, and Tolkien himself did not directly express conservationist views—except in some private letters, in which he tells about his fondness for forests and sadness at tree-felling. In later years, a number of authors of biographies or literary analyses of Tolkien conclude that during his writing of "The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien gained