J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein in South-Africa the 3rd of January 1892 and died in England on the 2nd September 1973. He and his mother moved to England when he was 3 years old, his father died in South-Africa, never making it to reunite with his family. His mother died when he was 12. He received his education at King Edward's School, St. Philip's Grammar School, and Oxford University. After graduating in 1915 he joined the British army and saw action in the Battle of the Somme. He was eventually discharged after spending most of 1917 in the hospital suffering from "trench fever". Tolkien was a scholar by profession. His academic positions were: staff member of the New English Dictionary (1918-20); Reader, later Professor of English Language at Leeds, 1920-25; Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925-45); and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature (1945-59). His principal professional focus was the study of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and its relation to linguistically similar languages (Old Norse, Old German, and Gothic), with special emphasis on the dialects of Mercia, that part of England in which he grew up and lived, but he was also interested in Middle English, especially the dialect used in the Ancrene Wisse (a twelfth century manuscript probably composed in western England).

 
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LATER SILMARILLION
Morgoth's Ring
The War of the Jewels
The Peoples of Middle-Earth

THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH
The Book of Lost Tales 1
The Book of Lost Tales 2
The Lays of Beleriand
The Shaping of Middle-Earth
The Lost Road and other writings

THE HISTORY OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS
The Return of the Shadow
The Treason of Isengard
The War of the Ring
Sauron Defeated

THE LORD OF THE RINGS
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King

STAND ALONE NOVELS
Bilbo's Last Song
Farmer Giles of Ham
Mr. Bliss
Roverandom
Smith of Wootton Major
The Annotated Hobbit
The Hobbit Graphic Novel
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
The Illustrated Hobbit
The Silmarillion

OMNIBUSES
The Lord of the Rings

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Poems and Stories
Poems from the Hobbit
Poems from The Lord of the Rings
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (and Other Verses from the Red Book)
The Father Christmas Letters
The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle
The Tolkien Reader
Tree and Leaf
Unfinished Tales (of Numenor and Middle-Earth)