J.R.R. Tolkien

English writer, poet and university professor. Born January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now South Africa) and died September 2, 1973 in Bournemouth, United Kingdom. Both J.R.R. Tolkien and his works have achieved worldwide literary and cult status since the fantasy world of Middle Earth and its inhabitants came of age in 1937. An Oxford Professor of English and Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien, even as a boy, began inventing languages of his own. Developing the saga of Lord of the Rings, built around his linguistic creation, was a twelve-year process, begun as a bedtime story for his children (including Christopher Tolkien), and evolving haphazardly into one of the richest and detailed mythologies ever created. J.R.R. Tolkien stands as one of the greatest imaginative authors of the twentieth century and Lord of the Rings is now hailed as a timeless masterpiece of English literature.