J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) was a British philologist and novelist whose The Lord of the Rings, published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955, effectively created the modern epic fantasy genre and remains one of the best-selling novels ever written. A professor of Anglo-Saxon and English language at Oxford, Tolkien built Middle-earth first as a linguistic exercise -- inventing languages and then the mythology and history needed to give them speakers -- before The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings emerged from that decades-long private world-building project.

Tolkien served in World War I, an experience biographers connect to the trilogy's themes of loss, camaraderie, and industrialized destruction of the natural world, and he spent much of his academic career as part of the Inklings, an Oxford literary group that also included C. S. Lewis. His son Christopher Tolkien spent decades after his father's death editing and publishing his unfinished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion, greatly expanding the published Middle-earth canon posthumously.

A new reader should start with The Hobbit for a gentler introduction, or go straight into The Fellowship of the Ring if ready for the full trilogy. The Lord of the Rings was adapted into Peter Jackson's acclaimed 2001-2003 film trilogy, and Middle-earth later returned to screen via Amazon's The Rings of Power television series beginning in 2022.