J. R. R. Tolkien
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (pronounced /ˈtɒlkiːn/) (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and their fictional world, the "Middle-earth" legendarium.
Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C.S. Lewis – they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
After his death, Tolkien's son, Christopher, published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about an imagined world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955 Tolkien applied the word legendarium to the larger part of these writings.
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[edit] Works
Tolkien is most well known for his fictional fantasy world which is the setting of many of his works; the complete body of works concering this world have been called the "legendarium". Alternatively it is known as Arda or Middle-earth. It is a very extensive setting, with a vast world (called Arda), in which is located the continent Middle-earth, where most of the stories play out. Arda has a long history spanning thousands of years from the creation of the world, to after the War of the Ring (the time of the novel The Lord of the Rings). Language is an important part of the legendarium, as Tolkien had a life-long love and fascination with languages. In fact, Tolkien first began creating languages, and the creation of a world where they could be spoken followed after. Tolkien's constructed languages go the full spectrum from actually usable ones with detailed grammar and vocabulary (Quenya and Sindarin), to less developed ones, down to those with only a few known names and words. Aside from his constructed languages, Tolkien also uses real-world languages as stand-ins for several languages in the narrative.
Tolkien had already been creating languages in his youth, leading up to the ones which would later become his Elvish languages. The first definite texts which laid the groundwork for the legendarium were written down around the time of World War I. Although still early and going to change over the following years, these three stories became and remained central to the history of the First Age (aka the Quenta Silmarillion): the story of Lúthien and Beren, the tragic tale of the Children of Húrin, and the Fall of Gondolin.
In 1937 Tolkien published The Hobbit, which was at unrelated to the legendarium, although he had borrowed some names and other things from his larger mythology. When he began writing the Hobbit-sequel, which would become The Lord of the Rings, he decided to move the Hobbit and its sequel and assimilate them into his legendarium. This caused a few discrepancies, mostly concerning Gollum and his "magic ring", which he corrected in later editions of the Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954/55, over a decade after it was begun. Through all this time, and for the rest of his life, he continually worked on his world, exploring and fleshing it out. Although he tried, he never got to publish a version of the Quenta Silmarillion or the other tales of the legendarium during his lifetime, failing sometimes against the publishers and often against his own perfectionism.
Much of his work on the legendarium has been published posthumously, edited by his son Christopher Tolkien. A few are edited together as a self-contained narrative text (The Silmarillion, The Children of Húrin), while the other books are more 'loose' collections of material: finished and unfinished narrative texts and poetry, earlier and alternative versions and drafts, essays and notes.
- For further information on the legendarium and an internal chronology, see: Tolkien's legendarium.
[edit] Reception
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when they were published in paperback in the United States led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre, resulting in dozens of expansive fantasy series that influence modern counterparts to this day. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature or more precisely, high fantasy. This is ironic, as the usual interpretation of High Fantasy involes great magic and a menagery of impossible creatures and natural laws that are askew - something Tolkien strived (and succeeded) to avoid in his low-magic fantasy-history world of Middle-earth. Tolkien's writings have inspired many other works of fantasy and have had a lasting effect on the entire field. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of 'The 50 greatest British writers since 1945', and his magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings has often been suggested as best book of the twentieth century, and best fantasy book, ever.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Published works of the legendarium
- See also Tolkien's legendarium#Published books.
- Books with self-contained narratives:
- The Hobbit (1937)
- The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)
- The Silmarillion (1977, edited by Christopher Tolkien)
- The Children of Húrin (2007, edited by Christopher Tolkien)
- Collections of material from the legendarium:
- Unfinished Tales (1980)
- The History of Middle-earth (12 volumes, 1983–1996)
- The History of The Hobbit (2 volumes, 2007)
[edit] Other fiction
- Leaf by Niggle (1945)
- Farmer Giles of Ham (1949)
- Smith of Wootton Major (1967)
- The Father Christmas Letters (1976, written 1920-1942)
- Mr. Bliss (1982)
- Roverandom (1998)
[edit] Non-fiction
- The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)
