J. R. R. Tolkien's most familiar creation, the hobbits of Middle-earth, belonged only to his private world until September 1937. Before then they were known only to his children, his great friend C. S. Lewis, and a few other people. The print run of what is now a children's classic--The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937)--in its first edition was fifteen hundred copies. Forty years later, in 1977, the initial print run for the first U.S. edition of Tolkien's The Silmarillion was over three hundred thousand copies, and two years later the run for the first U.S. paperback edition was reportedly over two and a half million copies.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, the first son of English citizens Arthur Reuel and Mabel Tolkien. At the time of his father's death in 1896, John Tolkien and his brother Hilary were...