J.R.R. Tolkien had a flair for the dramatic. As a linguist and expert on Old English and Old Norse literature, Tolkien was a professor at Oxford University from 1925 until 1959. He was also a tireless instructor, teaching between 70 and 136 lectures a year (his contract only called for 36). But the best part is the way he taught those classes. Although quiet and unassuming in public, Tolkien wasn't the typical stodgy, reserved stereotype of an Oxford don in the classroom. He went to parties dressed as a polar bear, chased a neighbor dressed as an axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon warrior, and was known to hand shopkeepers his false teeth as payment. As one of his students put it, "He could turn a lecture room into a mead hall."
J.R.R. Tolkien called Hitler a "ruddy little ignoramus." Tolkien's academic writings on Old Norse and Germanic history, language, and culture were extremely popular among the Nazi elite, who were obsessed with recreating ancient Germanic civilization. But Tolkien was disgusted by Hitler and the Nazi party, and made no secret of the fact. He considered forbidding a German translation of The Hobbit after the German publisher, in accordance with Nazi law, asked him to certify that he was an "Aryan." Instead, he wrote a scathing letter asserting, among other things, his regret that he had no Jewish ancestors. His feelings are also evidenced in a letter he wrote to his son: "I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler ... Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light."
Tolkien was never sure if he invented the word "hobbit" (for the novel The Hobbit, first published 1937), though his fictional race provides the definition for the Oxford English Dictionary. After his death, people unearthed an earlier appearance in print dating from 1853 in the "Denham Tracts", a Long List of fantastical creaturesby folklorist Michael Aislabie Denham. "Hobbits" appears next to "hobgoblins" and more arcane terms such as "cowies", "dunnies", and "wirrikows".
Still, Tolkien's hobbits — their appearance, character and habits — were his own invention. He also invented his own Old English derivation for "hobbit", from holbytla, "hole-builder".
Homo floresiensis "Flores Man"; nicknamed "Hobbit", is a species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.
Homo floresiensis were often barely over 3ft 7inches. It has been debated whether they were just Homo sapiens which had undergone insular dwarfism, but with further evidence they do seem to be a separate species of hominid. Evidently they and modern humans did coexist on the island for thousands of years without much evidence of conflict, and oral tradition- very likely based on folk memory of the extinct hobbits- largely holds they were relatively inoffensive.