J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), South African-born British writer, medieval scholar, and philologist (language scholar). Tolkien is best known for his fantasy novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). He published these and his other books under the name J. R. R. Tolkien.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to English parents. His father died when Tolkien was very young, and his mother returned to England with her two sons. She died when Tolkien was 12, and he and his brother were taken in and raised by a local priest.

Young Tolkien showed early promise as a linguist, inventing his own alphabets and languages. He won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied Old and Middle English and Old Norse. He also invented two languages he referred to as “elvish.” Soon after graduating in 1915, Tolkien enlisted in the British army to fight in World War I. After four months in the trenches he developed an infection known as trench fever and was sent home for a lengthy recuperation. War, he later said, deepened and sobered his imagination and stimulated his love of fantasy.

While hospitalized in 1917 Tolkien began to write, inventing a fantasy world that featured its own unique peoples, languages, and history. These early writings, which were published after the author’s death under the title The Silmarillion, present the mythological beginnings of what would eventually be dubbed Middle-earth. All of Tolkien’s fantasy works were set in this world.

Tolkien continued his scholarly work while writing fantasies. From 1920 to 1925 he taught at the University of Leeds, and in 1925 he became professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. He taught at Oxford for more than three decades, retiring in 1959.

As a scholar, Tolkien theorized about the meaning of fantasy and argued for the importance of such medieval fantasies as Beowulf and the Arthurian legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He also translated or edited editions of these works. In the essays “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” (1936) and “On Fairy-Stories” (1939), Tolkien claimed that the mythological imagination, which invents fantasy realms and beings, enriches the spirit and touches on basic truths in a manner akin to religion.

Tolkien peopled Middle-earth with different “races”: hobbits, elves, dwarves, wizards, orcs (goblins), and humans. Each of these races has distinct physical and moral traits. For instance, hobbits are short in stature and love a life of simple comforts. They represent the side of Tolkien’s nature that loved tobacco, beer, and companionship. Elves are tall and slim, and with their melodious language and their beauty they represent Tolkien’s religious and aesthetic ideals. Dwarves are a race of miners, small but powerfully built, who prize the gold and gems they dig from the earth. Often gruff and sometimes greedy, dwarves are also fiercely loyal to their friends and kinfolk. Wizards are gaunt and possess great magical powers; some are good and others are evil. Orcs are hideous monsters who represent pure evil. Men are the youngest race in Middle-earth, and they embody the potential for courage and cowardice, friendship and betrayal, generosity and selfishness—essentially the complexities of good and ill that Tolkien saw in modern people.

The central hobbit characters of Tolkien’s work, Bilbo Baggins and his nephew Frodo, were named after British enlisted men the author had known during his service in the army. Baggins and Frodo loathe danger and discomfort but find themselves called to high heroic action: Bilbo in the destruction of a dragon, and Frodo in battling Sauron, the demonic being who desires control of all Middle-earth.

The Hobbit, Tolkien’s first successful work of fiction, developed from stories he told to his children. It is notable for the completeness (both linguistically and geographically) of its setting. The story centers on the small and timid Bilbo Baggins, who is lured into a treasure-hunting adventure and finds a ring that makes its wearer invisible. The ring later passes to his nephew Frodo and becomes the central symbol in Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, a work of fantasy intended primarily for adults. This work, which describes the quest of Frodo to destroy the ring, was written as one complete story but was published in three parts: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), and The Return of the King (1955). The Lord of the Rings most fully expresses Tolkien’s ideals of self-sacrifice and love of both the land and artistic creation. With these works Tolkien established himself as a master of fantasy, a genre he helped resurrect as a serious form of modern literature.

Although Tolkien’s books never received any major awards, they sold well and became very influential, especially after being released in paperback in the mid-1960s. Toward the end of his life Tolkien was granted an honorary doctoral degree from Oxford and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), a member of an honorary order of knighthood.

Since Tolkien’s death his son Christopher has edited a number of books that collect his father’s previously unpublished work, including Tolkien’s notes and early drafts. These include The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), and the 12-volume The History of Middle-earth, which was published in installments from 1983 to 1996.

Animated film versions of Tolkien’s books include The Hobbit (1977) and The Lord of the Rings (1978). A successful trilogy of live-action movie versions based on The Lord of the Rings was released beginning in 2001: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). The last of the three won 11 Academy Awards, tying a record for the most Oscars claimed by one film.