Literature
J. R. R. Tolkien
Philologist and author of The Lord of the Rings
Born 1892 · Died 1973
Photo: Unknown photo studio commissioned by Tolkien's students 1925/6 (private communic · Public domain
«Not all those who wander are lost.»
J. R. R. Tolkien was a professional philologist who invented languages for pleasure and then built a world for them to be spoken in. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings created modern fantasy as a genre.
Key achievements
- Wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
- Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, 1925–1945
- Invented complete languages, including Quenya and Sindarin
Universities
Oxford, England
Read classics and then English at Exeter College, and returned as Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945 and of English from 1945 to 1959.
Facts
- He wrote the first line of The Hobbit on a blank page of an examination script he was marking, and did not know what a hobbit was.
- He and C. S. Lewis met weekly in an Oxford pub as part of a group called the Inklings, reading each other unfinished chapters.
- He fought at the Somme in 1916 and said the dead marshes of his books came from what he saw there.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.