J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien was an English writer and philologist, born in Bloemfontein on 3 January 1892 and raised mostly in England after his father's early death. He fought in the First World War, then built an academic career in language and literature, spending many years at the University of Oxford, where he studied Old English and medieval texts. His love of ancient languages shaped everything he wrote. He invented tongues of his own and then imagined the peoples and histories that might have spoken them.

His children's story The Hobbit brought him wide notice, and its successor, The Lord of the Rings, became one of the best-loved works of the twentieth century. Together with the posthumously edited tales of the older ages of Middle-earth, they helped establish modern fantasy as a major form of storytelling. Tolkien died on 2 September 1973.