J.R.R. Tolkien

Sir (John) Ronald (Reuel) Tolkien or simply JRRT (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) is the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings.

He attended King Edward's School, Coventry and Oxford University; he worked as reader in English language at Leeds from 1920 to 1925, as professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and of English Language and Literature, also at Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was a strongly committed Catholic. He belonged to a literary discussion group called the Inklings, through which he enjoyed a close friendship with C. S. Lewis. In January 1972 he was knighted by Edward VI. Later the same year he was - somewhat surprisingly - given the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In addition to The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1955), Tolkien's published fiction includes The Silmarillion (1977) and other posthumous books about what he called a legendarium, a fictional mythology of the remote past of Earth, called Arda, and in particular of the continent of Middle-earth (from middangeard, the lands inhabitable by Men). Most of these posthumously published works come from Tolkien's drafts and were put together as books by his son Christopher. Tolkien's other published fiction includes adaptations of stories originally told to his children and not directly related to the legendarium.

The enduring popularity and influence of Tolkien's works have established him as the "father of the modern high fantasy genre". His fans even include royal personages, such as Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia.