1892-1973 · English philologist and Oxford professor, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
About J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English philologist and author, born in Bloemfontein and raised in and around Birmingham. Orphaned young, he was brought up under the guardianship of Father Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory and remained a devout Roman Catholic all his life. He served as a signals officer on the Somme in 1916, then taught Anglo-Saxon and English language and literature at Leeds and Oxford, where he was a friend of C. S. Lewis and a member of the Inklings. His scholarship on Beowulf and Middle English poetry and his invented languages underlie The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again tells how Bilbo Baggins, a comfortable, respectable hobbit of Bag-End under the Hill, is drawn into an adventure he never wanted. The wizard Gandalf marks his door, and thirteen dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield arrive for an unexpected party.
On Fairy-Stories is Tolkien's defense of fairy-story as a serious form of imaginative art. He begins by rejecting narrow definitions that identify fairy tales with children, small supernatural beings, dreams, or mere folklore collection.
The Lord of the Rings continues the story begun in The Hobbit. Sixty years after his adventure, Bilbo Baggins leaves the Shire on his eleventy-first birthday and, at Gandalf's urging, leaves his magic ring to his young cousin and heir Frodo.