The English writer and scholar John
Ronald Reuel Tolkien, b. Bloemfontein, South Africa, Jan. 3, 1892, d. Sept.
2, 1973, reestablished fantasy as a serious form in modern English literature.
As professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, he presented (1936) the
influential lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," an
aesthetic justification of the presence of the mythological creatures--Grendel
and the dragon--in the medieval poem; he then went on to publish his own
fantasy, The Hobbit (1937). There followed his critical theory of
fantasy, "On Fairy-Stories" (1939), and his masterpieces, the
mythological romances The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and The
Silmarillion (1977).
Brought to England as a child upon the
death of his father in 1896, Tolkien was educated at King Edward's School in
Birmingham and at Oxford. He enlisted in 1915 in the Lancashire Fusiliers;
before leaving for France, he married his longtime sweetheart, Edith Bratt.
Tolkien saw action in the Battle of the Somme, but trench fever kept him
frequently hospitalized during 1917. He held academic posts in philology and in
English language and literature from 1920 until his retirement in 1959.
Tolkien began writing The Hobbit
in 1936. For a number of years previously he had been inventing languages for
the mythical place—Middle Earth—that is the setting for the The Hobbit
and had been writing stories about Middle Earth as well (which were published
posthumously as The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales [1980]).
The Hobbit was soon quite popular, and Tolkien was asked for a sequel
by his publisher. In 1937 he began work on what would eventually be published as
The Lord of the Rings. The work consists of The Fellowship of the
Ring, The Two Towers,
and The Return of the King. This remarkable work by the mid-1960s had
become, especially in its appeal to young people, a sociocultural phenomenon.
Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in a mythical
past; the latter work chronicles the struggle between various good and evil
kingdoms for possession of a magical ring that can shift the balance of power in
the world. The trilogy is remarkable for both its subtly delineated fantasy
types (elves, dwarves, and hobbits) and its sustained imaginative storytelling.
It is noteworthy as a rare, successful modern version of the heroic epic. An
animated film version of the first two books of the trilogy appeared in 1978.
Inclination and profession moved Tolkien
to study the heroic literature of northern Europe--Beowulf, the Edda, the
Kalevala. The spirit of these poems and their languages underlies his humorous
and whimsical writings, such as Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) and The
Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962), as well as his more substantial works.
Bibliography
The Monster and the Critics and other Essays
The Hobbit
Leaf by Niggle
Farmer Giles of Ham
Lord of the Rings
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
On Fairy Stories
Tree and Leaf
Smith of Wootton Major
The Road Goes Ever On (with Donald Swann)
Finn and Hengest
Mr Bliss
Pictures by JRR Tolkien
Sir Gawain, Pearl and Sir Orfeo
The Father Christmas Letters
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
Edited by Christopher Tolkien
The Silmarillion
Return of the Shadow
Unfinished Tales Morgoth's Ring
Sauron Defeated
The Book of Lost Tales Part 1
The Book of Lost Tales Part 2
The Lays of Beleriand
The Lost Road and other Writings
The Shaping of Middle-earth
The Treason of Isengard
The War of the Ring
