J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein, lost both his parents in childhood and was brought up under the guardianship of a Birmingham priest. A philologist, he invented languages before inventing stories in which to speak them. He fought on the Somme, where almost all his close friends died, then held the chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford; his 1936 lecture on the great Anglo-Saxon heroic poem has had a lasting influence. He died in 1973, leaving a mass of unpublished writings that his son published.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelThe Lord of the RingsJ. R. R. Tolkien · 1954Literature