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The reason why Tolkien's writing is so intense is because he was a philologist, a studier of words. He also knew several languages, including dead languages like Latin and Anglo-Saxon. He was a professor like C.S.Lewis and Lewis Carol. Most writers back then were professors. Or they were obsessed with words like Nathaniel Hawthorne who shut himself up in his room most of his life recording words for situations and plots. That's why when you're reading their works you will often stumble on a word that you have never heard before. They are teaching you through whimsical stories that will hopefully draw your attention more than a lecture in class. Or just cause they write what they love heart

"We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity if we avoid hitting and whacking and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting'; talk and chat and prefer 'speech' and 'discourse'; well-bred, brilliant, or polite noblemen (visions of snobbery columns in the Press, and fat men on the Riviera) and prefer the 'worthy, brave and courteous men' of long ago." ~J.R.R.Tolkien on justification of a high style of writing

Modern Writing today is as NightIntent said, people today "want movies, TV shows, graphic novels, Spark-Notes, whatever other shortcuts there are." And novelists today don't need to be skilled in English Literature, they just have to know how to entertain the reader. And that today means using simpler words. All the new writers worry about is if it will sell. Classic Novelists were doing it for the love of writing.

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I don't think all the current writers think about is whether it will sell. You have to love what you do to be truly good at it. And any published author has had to think about what will or won't sell. What's popular now wouldn't have been popular back in say Charles Dicken's time.