J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien — John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) — was an English writer and philologist, born in Bloemfontein and raised in Birmingham. He served with the Lancashire Fusiliers on the Somme, then spent his career at Oxford, as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945. The invented languages and mythology he had been working on privately became the setting of “The Hobbit” (1937) and “The Lord of the Rings” (1954-1955). Much of the rest of the legendarium — “The Silmarillion” (1977), “Unfinished Tales”, “The Children of Húrin” and the twelve volumes of “The History of Middle-earth” — was edited and published after his death by his son Christopher.