Professor of literature and English, who became famous with his trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954-55).

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born of British parents in Bloemfontein, South Africa, an area known as the Orange Free State. His father, Arthur Tolkien, had left England in order to take up a senior position with a bank in the colony. Just when he began to walk he was bitten by a tarantula and was saved by a nurse who sucked out the poison.

The climate proved bad for Ronald's health, but his father could not leave his business, so it was arranged that Mabel and her two sons (Hilary was born in 1894) should return to Birmingham when Ronald was three. This beautiful rural area made a great impression on the young Ronald, and its effect can be seen in his later writings and his pictures. Before he could join them, Arthur contracted rheumatic fever and died in 1896.

At King Edward's School, Ronald was autorbusght Classics, Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English. He had great linguistic talent, and after studying old Welsh and Finnish, he started to invent his own "Elvish" languages.

In 1900, Mabel became a Roman Catholic. This upset her family and no further financial help was forthcoming from them. In 1904 Tolkien's mother died of diabetes, and the young John Ronald Reuel moved with his brother Hilary to aunt's home in Birmingham.

The loss of his mother gave Tolkien a deep sense that nothing could last forever. His Catholic faith became very important to him at this time and was to remain the keystone of his life. He began to invent a language of his own.

He studied at Oxford from 1908 and was awarded First Class Honours degree in English Language and Literature in 1915 and joined the Lancashire Fusiliers. Before embarking for France in June 1916, he married his childhood sweetheart Edith Bratt. Tolkien survived the Battle of the Somme, where two of his three closest friends were killed, but later that year he was struck down by trench fever and sent back to England.

He returned home suffering from shell shock, and while convalescing he started to study early forms of language and work on The Silmarillion - his great work of language and mythology, published 1977-. The Tale of Beren and Luthien Tinuviel always remained his favourite. Edith, he said, was his Luthien. For the rest of his life, Tolkien expanded the mythology of his fantasy worlds.

In 1918 Tolkien joined the staff of New English Dictionary and in 1919 he was a freelance tutor in Oxford. Tolkien then worked as a teacher and professor at the University of Leeds, and in 1925 he became Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. Later he became Merton Professor of English (1945-59).

Tolkien made his reputation as a Middle English scholar in the 1920s with A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (1925). Among his later works was the 1936 lecture, later published, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. He was also interested in the Finnish national epos Kalevala, from which he found ideas for his imaginary language guenya and which influenced several of his stories. Most of the inhabitants of Tolkien's imaginary Middle-Earth are derived from English folklore and mythology, or from an idealized Anglo-Saxon past.

Tolkien did not publish very much academic research. He did, however, have a heavy teaching load. When he lectured, he did so in the dramatic manner of an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall. W.H. Auden wrote to Tolkien: "What an unforgettable experience it was for me as an undergraduate, hearing you recite Beowulf. The voice was the voice of Gandalf."

With C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams and other friends, Tolkien formed an informal literary group called The Inklings, which took shape in the 1930s.

At C.S. Lewis's prompting, The Hobbit was developed from the bedtime stories Tolkien told his children. He submitted it to the publisher Stanley Unwin, who gave it to his ten-year-old son, Rayner, to read. Rayner's report was favourable and the book was published in 1937.

Unwin wanted a sequel, another book about Hobbits, but Tolkien didn't have one. He began to write again, the first few chapters of what was to become The Lord of The Rings. He then began to ask himself how these Hobbits fitted into the grand linguistic and mythological design of the Silmarillion. In investigating this, the new book began to develop a darker, grander style.

The Lord of the Rings took 12 years to complete. Tolkien said, "It is written in my life blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other." Because it was so large, The Lord of the Rings was published in three parts: The Fellowship of The Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954) and The Return of The King (1955).

While The Hobbit (1937) is said to be a work of fantasy for children - originally it was written to the author's children - the epic The Lord of the Rings has a depth that fascinate adult readers. The title of the book refers to Sauron, the embodiment of evil in Middle-Earth. Sauron created the Rings of Power, and the One Ring, which rules the other rings and thus makes him the Lord of the Rings. Actually the story depicts different reactions of its characters, from men to hobbits, elves and other beings, to evil forces.

The plot is simple: in order to save the world from the Dark Lord, Sauron, a young hibbit called Frodo must return the mythical ring, a kind of wedding ring between world and evil, to the Mount Doom, where it was forged. A coalition is formed among the races of Middle-Earth to help him and to battle the armies of Sauron.

In the mid-1960s American paperback editions of The Lord of the Rings started to gain cult fame. The Tolkiens moved in 1968 to Poole near Bournemouth but after the death of his wife in 1971, Tolkien returned to Oxford. In 1972 he received CBE from the Queen.

He died after a brief illness on 2nd September 1973, and was buried beside Edith in Wolvercote Cemetery.

His life's great mythological work, The Silmarillion, was finally published in 1977, edited by his son Christopher.

Selected works:

• A Middle English Vocabulary (1922)
• Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (1925, ed., with E.V. Gordon)
• Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936)
• Songs for the Philologist (1936, with E.V. Gordon and others)
• The Hobbit (1937)
• Farmer Gill of Ham (1949)
• The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
• The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962)
• Ancrene Wisse (1962, ed.)
• Tree and Leaf (1964)
• The Tolkien Reader (1966)
• The Road Goes Ever On (1967)
• Smith of Wootton Major (1967)
• Bilbo's Last Song (1974)
• The Father Christmas Letters (1976)
• The Silmarillion (1977)
• Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien (1979)
• Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth (1980, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
• Poems and Stories (1980)
• The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981)
• The Old English Exodus (1981, translator)
• Mr Bliss (1982)
• Finn and Hengest (1983)
• The History of Middle-Earth:
  • The Book of Lost Tales 1 (1983, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Book of Lost Tales 2 (1984, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Lays of Beleriand (1985, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Shaping of Middle-Earth (1986, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Return of the Shadow (1988, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Treason of Isengard (1989, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The War of the Ring (1990, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • Sauron Defeated (1991, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • Morgoth's Ring: The Later Silmarillion Part 1 (1993, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion Part 2 (1994, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
  • The Peoples of Middle-Earth (1996, ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
    

Bibliography:

• Pearce, J. (ed.) (2001). Tolkien: A Celebration: Collected Writings on a Literary Legacy
• Pearce, J. (2001). Tolkien: Man and Myth
• Carpenter, H. (2000). J.R.R. Tolkien
• Day, D. (1995). Tolkien Bestiary
• Tyler, J. (1995). The Tolkien Companion
• Noel, R. S. (1980). The Languages of Tolkien's Middle Earth