J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) wrote the famous The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, making him among the most famous novelists of the twentieth century. Tolkien was an English poet, well-known philologist and a Professor of Anglo-Saxon and the English Language and Literature at Oxford between 1925 and 1959. Tolkien is thought to have created the renaissance of fantasy literature that occurred in the second half of the twentieth century.

Tolkien grew up fascinated by nature, fantasy and language. He read widely and wrote poetry at an early age (a practice that continued throughout the course of his life). Prior to World War II, Tolkien wrote all of the documents in The Lost Road and Other Writings, the products of many of his linguistic and fantastic explorations. These writings were completed in the interwar period.

Tolkien's first job following his tour in the...