John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon See more

Influences
Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences, including his See more

Tolkien learnt to paint and draw as a child and continued to do so all his adult life. From early in his writing career, the development of his stories was accompanied by … See more

Influence
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The … See more

Ancestry
Tolkien was English, and thought of himself as such. His immediate paternal ancestors were … See more

Religion
Tolkien's Catholicism was a significant factor in C. S. Lewis's conversion from atheism to Christianity. He once wrote to Rayner Unwin's daughter Camilla, who wished to know the purpose of life, that it was "to increase … See more

Linguistic career
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology. He specialized in English philology at university and in 1915 graduated with Old Norse See more