John Ronald Reuel Tolkien began life on the 3rd of January, 1892, in Bloemfontain, South Africa. He spent most of his childhood years in the countryside of England, his love for this pastoral landscape externalized and encoded into his works and pictures. At the age of twelve, he experienced the death of his mother(his father's death preceding hers years back), orphaning he and his brother who were made wards of a local priest. Upon the completion of a First Class Honours degree in English Language and Literature at Oxford (1915), Tolkien married Edith Bratt and joined the British army to later fight in the Battle of the Somme. When he returned from war, he procured a post on the New English Dictionary (1918-20) and embarked upon the writing of the mythological and legendary cycle he originally dubbed `The Book of Lost Tales,' which eventually became known as `The...