Question: When was "A New hobbit" started?
About the article "The Lord of the Rings", section "Writing".

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The hobbit was defined as a measure of volume, two and a half imperial bushels, but in practice it was often used as a unit of weight for specific goods.
According to George Richard Everitt, Inspector of Corn Returns for Denbigh in northern Wales, when examined by the House of Commons in 1888, grains were sold by the hobbit, measured by weight.
A hobbit of oats weighed 105 pounds, a hobbit of barley 147 pounds, and a hobbit of wheat 168 pounds.
The figures in hobbits were then converted to standard imperial bushels for official reporting.
In addition to grains, there was also a hobbit of beans at 180 pounds, and in Flintshire, a 200-pound hobbit of old potatoes, or210 pounds of new potatoes.
Around 1600, Welsh farmland was sometimes denominated by its productive capacity or "measure of seedness" instead of its physical area, so that in at least one case a plot was registered as"a hobbett of land", that is, large enough to grow one hobbit of grain per year.
Already in 1863, the hobbit was used as an example of the "customary confusion in our British weights and measures".
An anonymous contributor to Charles Dickens's journal All the Year Round, arguing in favour of the decimal metric system,noted thatIf buy wheat at Wrexham, must order by the hobbet of one hundred and sixty eight .
But, even if I do happen to know what a hobbet of wheat means at Wrexham, that knowledge good for Flint is not good for Caernarvonshire.
A hobbet of wheat at Pwlheli contains eighty-four pounds more than a hobbet at Wrexham; and a hobbet of oats is something altogether different; and a hobbet of barley is something altogether different again. 
Jackson's involvement in the making of a film version of "The Hobbit" has a long and chequered history.
In November 2006, a letter from Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh stated that due to an ongoing legal dispute between Wingnut Films (Jackson's production company) and New Line Cinema, Jackson would not be directing the film.
New Line Cinema's head Robert Shaye commented that Jackson "...will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working at the company...".
This prompted an online call for a boycott of New Line Cinema, and by August 2007 Shaye was trying to repair his working relationship.
On 18 December 2007, it was announced that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema had reached agreement to make two prequels, both based on "The Hobbit", and to be released in 2012 and 2013 with Jackson as a writer and executive producer and Guillermo del Toro directing.
However, in early 2010, del Toro dropped out of directing the film because of production delays and a month later Jackson was back in negotiations to direct "The Hobbit"; and on 15 October he was finalised as the director—with New Zealand confirmed as the location a couple of weeks later.
The film started production on 20 March 2011.
On 30 July 2012, Peter Jackson announced via his Facebook page that the two planned 'Hobbit' movies would be expanded into a trilogy.
The third film will not act as a bridge between "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" films, but would continue to expand "The Hobbit" story by using material found in the "Lord of the Rings Appendices". 
Tolkien believed he had invented the word "hobbit" when he began writing "The Hobbit" (it was revealed years after his death that the word predated Tolkien's usage, though with a different meaning).
Tolkien's concept of hobbits, in turn, seems to have been inspired by Edward Wyke Smith's 1927 children's book "The Marvellous Land of Snergs", and by Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel "Babbitt".
The Snergs were, in Tolkien's words, "a race of people only slightly taller than the average table but broad in the shoulders and have the strength of ten men."
Tolkien wrote to W. H. Auden that "The Marvellous Land of Snergs" "was probably an unconscious source-book for the Hobbits" and he told an interviewer that the word "hobbit" "might have been associated with Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt" (like hobbits, George Babbitt enjoys the comforts of his home).
However, Tolkien claims that he started "The Hobbit" suddenly, without premeditation, in the midst of rating a set of student essay exams, writing on a blank piece of paper: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit".
While "The Hobbit" introduced this comfortable race to the world, it is only in writing "The Lord of the Rings" that Tolkien developed details of their history and wider society.
He set out a fictional etymology for the name in an appendix to Lord of the Rings, to the effect that it was derived from "holbytla" (plural "holbytlan"), a speculative reconstruction of Old English, meaning “hole-builder” (in the books, Old English stands in for words in the language of the fictional Rohirrim). 
When Christopher Tolkien began publishing "The History of Middle-earth", a twelve-volume series documenting J. R. R. Tolkien’s creative writing process in the creation of Middle-earth, with texts dating from the 1910s to the 1990s, he made a conscious decision not to issue a volume detailing the creation of "The Hobbit".
According to him, "The Hobbit" was not originally a part of the Middle-earth universe and was attached to his father's earlier, far darker legendarium only superficially, although the existence of "The Hobbit" forever altered the legendarium.
As Christopher Tolkien was not going to embark on a published study of "The Hobbit", the task was given to Taum Santoski in the 1980s.
Santoski had connections to the Marquette collection of Tolkien material, which is where the original manuscripts reside.
He died in 1991, and ultimately the task passed to John Rateliff.
Although Christopher Tolkien did not work directly on "The History of The Hobbit", the work is in a very similar vein to the "literary archaeology" of his "History of Middle-earth".
Rateliff submitted a finished draft of the book to Christopher Tolkien, who, approving of the work, gave "The History of The Hobbit" his personal blessing to be published in association with his father’s other works. 
In his writings, Tolkien depicted Hobbits as fond of an unadventurous, bucolic and simple life of farming, eating, and socializing, although capable of defending their homes courageously if the need arises.
They would enjoy six meals a day, if they could get them.
They were often described as enjoying simple food, though this seems to be of an Oxfordshire style, such as cake, bread, meat, potatoes, ale and tea.
They claim to have invented the art of smoking pipe-weed, and according to "The Hobbit" and "The Return of The King" it can be found all over Middle-earth.
The Hobbits of the Shire developed the custom of giving away gifts on their birthdays, instead of receiving them, although this custom was not universally followed among other Hobbit cultures or communities.
They use the term "mathom" for old and useless objects, which are invariably given as presents many times over, or are stored in a museum ("mathom-house").
Some Hobbits live in "hobbit-holes" or "Smials", traditional underground homes found in hillsides, downs, and banks.
Like all Hobbit architecture, they are notable for their round doors and windows.
The Hobbits had a distinct calendar: every year started on a Saturday and ended on a Friday, with each of the twelve months consisting of thirty days.
Some special days did not belong to any month — Yule 1 and 2 (New Year's Eve & New Years Day) and three Lithedays in mid-summer.
Every fourth year there was an extra Litheday, most likely as an adaptation, similar to a leap year, to ensure that the calendar remained in synch with the seasons.