J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien was one of the most influential and popular writers of the 20th century. He was born in South Africa to English parents, but moved to England with his mother and brother after his father's death in 1896. He grew up in Birmingham and later attended Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Classics, Old English, Germanic languages, Welsh and Finnish. He served as a lieutenant in the British Army during World War I, and fought in the Battle of the Somme, where he lost most of his close friends. He was also afflicted with trench fever, which forced him to return to England in 1916. During his convalescence, he began to work on his legendarium, a collection of stories and poems about a mythical world called Arda and its inhabitants. He married Edith Bratt in 1916, and they had four children together. He worked as a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University from 1925 to 1945, and then as a professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C. S. Lewis and a member of the literary group The Inklings, who met regularly at a pub in Oxford to discuss their works and ideas. He published his first novel, The Hobbit, in 1937, which was a great success and led to the request for a sequel. He spent the next 16 years writing The Lord of the Rings, a monumental epic that is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of literature of all time. The trilogy was published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955, and achieved cult status by the 1960s. It has sold over 150 million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than 50 languages. It has also inspired numerous adaptations in film, television, radio, stage, video games and other media. Tolkien continued to write and revise his legendarium until his death in 1973. His son Christopher edited and published many of his posthumous works, such as The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), The History of Middle-earth (1983-1996) and The Children of Húrin (2007). These works reveal the vast scope and depth of Tolkien's imagination and creativity, as well as his profound knowledge of languages, mythology, history and literature. Tolkien is widely recognized as the father of modern fantasy literature, and has influenced countless authors, artists and scholars with his vision and style.