Name: TOLKIEN, John Ronald Reuel Aged: 81
Born: January 3, 1892 Where: Bloemfontein, S. AFRICA
Died: September 2, 1973 Where: Bournemouth, Hampshire, ENGLAND
Interred: Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, ENGLAND
Married: Edith Mary Bratt When: March 22, 1916
Awarded: 1957 International Fantasy Award for Lord of the Rings, 1974 Grandmaster of Fantasy Award (Gandalf), 1978 Ditmar (Australian) and Gandalf for The Simarillion, and the 1981 Balrog for Unfinished Tales.

Writer of adult Fantasy novels and creator of the Hobbit and Middle-Earth.

Tolkien fought in WWI with the British at Somme, France, and returned to England from that battle as a shell shock case. Tolkien recovered and began writing in his spare time, finishing The Hobbit in 1936, and published in 1937. This book was followed by the sequel worlds in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. These books have become much more popular today because the stories lend themselves well to computer games and the graphic arts of modern films.

Someone once said, "Hell, you gotta write a few books before you know where you are." That crudely put thought seems to apply to the stories of J. R. R. Tolkien. From the Hobbit Bilbo's ring to the quests of Frodo, Tolkien explored his kingdom, created its elfish language, molded its centuries of the past, and laid down an epic world in fantasy form. And after the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien knew where he was. The Silmarillion, completed by Tolkien's son, Christopher, is a flowing prose-poem of the writer's now real world of Middle-Earth.

An able man with books and the classic languages, Tolkien rose to professorship at Oxford, Leeds, and Pembroke. He wrote some of Fantasy's true masterpieces and was one of Fantasy's true masters.

Further information at The Tolkien Timeline

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

BIOGRAPHY: J.R.R. Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter, 1977 - reissued 1992, and Supernatural Fiction Writers, E. F. Bleiler

OBITUARY: The New York Times, Monday, Sept 3, 1973, p18

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