J.R.R.TOLKIEN: THE LORD OF THE HIGH-FANTASY

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892 -1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high-fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, now Free State Province in South Africa. Tolkien's paternal ancestors were middle-class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in London and Birmingham. 

More information: Tolkien Society

The Tolkien family had emigrated from Germany in the 18th century but had become quickly intensely English. According to the family tradition, the Tolkiens had arrived in England in 1756, as refugees from Frederick the Great's invasion of the Electorate of Saxony during the Seven Years' War. Several families with the surname Tolkien or similar spelling live in northwestern Germany, mainly in Lower Saxony and Hamburg.

Tolkien and his wife Edith at 76 Sandfield Road

Tolkien devised several themes that were reused in successive drafts of his legendarium, beginning with The Book of Lost Tales, written while recuperating from illnesses contracted during The Battle of the Somme. 

The two most prominent stories, the tale of Beren and Lúthien and that of Túrin, were carried forward into long narrative poems, published in The Lays of Beleriand.

Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called The Hobbit, which he had written some years before for his own children, came in 1936 to the attention of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the London publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for publication. 

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

However, when it was published a year later, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and it became popular enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel. The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic novel The Lord of the Rings, originally published in three volumes 1954–1955. 

Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for The Lord of the Rings, during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend C. S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. 

Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set against the background of The Silmarillion, but in a time long after it.

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Tolkien died on 2 September 1973 from a bleeding ulcer and chest infectionat the age of 81.

Courage is found in unlikely places. 

J.R.R. Tolkien