John Tolkien was an English author, poet, philologist, and high school professor, well known as the writer of the classic high fantasy books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-saxon at Oxford High school from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature there from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C. Lewis they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth Ii on 28 March 1972.
after his death, Tolkien's son Christopher released a series of books based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion.
(John Tolkien photo #2)
These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about an imagined world named Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings.
(John Tolkien photo #3)
While many other writers had released books of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the dad of modern fantasy literature or, more precisely, of high fantasy.
John Tolkien
