It is hard to imagine what world readership would be like, let alone the High Fantasy genre without the pioneering influence of author, philologist, and professor of ancient languages J.R.R. Tolkien. While fantasy was a genre before Tolkien’s time, the great success of his works led to a major spike in popularity of the genre and he took his place as the ‘father of modern fantasy’.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3rd, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa. When Tolkien was three years old he, his mother, and younger brother travelled to England for a family visit but his father died while still behind in South Africa, leaving the family to relocate to a town outside of Birmingham and settle in with relations they had there.

Tolkien’s mother homeschooled him and his brother until her death in 1904. She gifted him with a great love of storytelling and a love of nature. She raised her children Catholic, cutting the family off from relations with the rest of her Baptist family. When Tolkien’s mother died when he was 12, he and his brother were put in the care of the Catholic church and they ended up in a boarding house in Birmingham where he met another tenant and his later wife, Edith Mary Bratt.

Tolkien attended Oxford University from 1911-1915, initially studying classics but changing to English language and literature for his final two years. In the summer of 1914, the First World War erupted on the Continent, but Tolkien waited until finishing his undergraduate studies before enlisting.

As he writes in the Forward to the Second Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring:

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence…It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”

After the war Tolkien worked first for the Oxford English Dictionary then he was hired at Oxford University to teach. He translated classic works of Middle English and Anglo-Saxon, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf, but his fame came with the release of the charming adventure story The Hobbit in 1937. The Hobbit is set in the environs of an imagined world called Middle Earth, which contains a mythos and geography heavily influenced by Tolkien’s study of ancient languages and saga. It is the tale of Bilbo Baggins and the central adventures of his middle age, and served ultimately as the prequel to The Lord of the Rings, published in three parts from 1954-1955.

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have been reprinted numerous times and translated into over 30 languages, giving them a lasting place in pop culture and literary history. Tolkien’s universe influenced many different facets of storytelling from hit video games like The Legends of Zelda to the famed role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. It spawned a groundbreaking movie franchise and continues to influence storytellers to this day.

J.R.R. Tolkien and Edith had four children together, one of whom, Christopher, would work to publish more of his father’s work after Tolkien’s death. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973 and was buried with his wife in Oxford.