shrooms...just a suggestion...

His children? Tessie made a funny

He was packin' something in that pipe.

Maybe from C.S. Lewis? I know they were friends, so maybe Lewis brought up the Chronicles one day and Tolkien got an idea.... or drugs! ;)

He started writing the Hobbit as a children's book and the story became much more than that. He developed a whole world around it with it's own language and history back to the beginning of time (the Silmarillion). Part of his ideas came from the terrible things of war and his fear of new inventions. He had a brilliant imagination.

Well, you can read his forward in the beginning of the trilogy. He first told them as stories to his kids who begged him to write them down. He also wrote from his own life experiences...like any writer. You can look him up on wikipedia. Perhaps I am not fully understanding the nature of your question because it seems so bleeding obvious how to find this information out, if you don't mind my saying so.

Well, it all started with The Hobbit. That came to him first when he was marking his student's tests. He got an idea, and wrote this on the back of one of them : "There once was a hobbit who lived in a hole in the ground." Tolkien studied many languaged as well and had developed the Elvish language during his time in the trenches in WWI. So, this provided an opportunity to create this world were he could use this language and his new inspiration. After much success, his agent (publisher, whoever it was) suggested that he release another book of this Middle-Earth. He had The Silmarillion, but there were no hobbits in it, so that was a no-go. So, he wrote "The Lord of the Rings". Of course, this story was far too huge to publish! So, he had to break it into a trilogy. *Just so you know, I'm not making any of this up. I know this from reading an autobiography for an English project, as well as watching the documentary "Ringers: Lord of the Fans"*

According to the foreword in my old copy, he wrote the Hobbit as bedtime stories told to his son and written down after the boy fell asleep. This is a time honored method of writing kids stories used by others such as A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), the Rev. Awdry (Thomas the Tank Engine) and others. When Tolkien's son was serving in WWII, Tolkien, who had served in WWI, started writing letters to him continuing the Baggins story as a way to keep his spirits up. Eventually, he gathered those stories together and put them into a book, which his publisher thought was too long and split into three.

Tolkien's intention was to create a sort of European mythology - something along the lines of the Greek Myths and the Viking Myths, since Western Europe's past was pretty effectively wiped out by the Romans. He drew from many world cultures - you can see a little bit of Celtic influence, some Nordic influence, some Moorish... and melded it all together in true tall-tale format.

Celtic mythology and the such. You see elements of it in his books.

"One inspiration for Tolkien’s writing was his relationship with his wife, Edith. He told one of his sons about a special moment with his wife early in their marriage. In 1917, while on leave from his army officer’s post, they went for a walk in the woods. There she danced for him alone. He said, “I met the Luthien Tinuviel of my own personal romance with her dark hair, fair face, and starry eyes and beautiful voice.” In that “glade filled with hemlocks” there arose the myth of Beren and Luthien. On their gravestone, it reads: Edith Mary Tolkien, Luthien, 1889-1971. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973. He wrote, “Forever (especially when alone) we still met in the woodland glade and went hand in hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before our last parting.” Somehow, the difficulties of their lives never touched “the memories of our youthful love.”  Tolkien met C.S. Lewis at an Oxford faculty meeting, May 11, 1926. Lewis wrote in his diary about Tolkien that he was “a smooth, pale, fluent little chap … No harm in him: only needs a smack or so.” The relationship developed, and Tolkien invited Lewis to join the Coalbiters Club, which focused on reading Icelandic myths (1927). These and other regular meetings allowed Tolkien and Lewis (at this time an atheist) to talk about issues relating to faith. In 1929, Lewis embraced theism; but it was not till 1931 that he came to believe in Christ as the Son of God. One night, Lewis, Tolkien, and Hugo Dyson were having dinner at Magdalen College. Lewis had difficulty with the parallels in pagan mythology and the Gospels. Lewis maintained that “myths are lies.” Tolkien argued, “No, they are not.” Myths in Tolkien’s view, although they may contain error, also reflect part of God’s reality. They are splintered fragments of the true light. Only by becoming a “sub-creator,” inventing myths, can mankind return to the perfection before the Fall. After a long night, together they came to the conclusion that Christ was the true myth—the myth become fact—revealed in history. Soon afterwards, Lewis came to believe in Christ. Lewis wrote in a letter to Arthur Greeves with respect to his new faith, “My long talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a great deal to do with it.”" Source and further information: http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/sites/www.cslewisinstitute.org/files/webfm/aboutcslewis/TolkienProfile.pdf

he traveled to what he thought was middle earth, either in person of in a dream. Inspiration is a funny thing

Opium.

folklore. plus he was in touch with the elf inside of him. aka...self.