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non fiction works
Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962)
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1937)
Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale (1934)
The Devil's Coach Horses (1925)
English and Welsh, in Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures (1963)
Middle English "Losenger": Sketch of an etymological and semantic enquiry (1953)
A Middle English Vocabulary (1922)
The Name 'Nodens', concerning the name Nodens (1932)
Ofermod and Beorhtnoth's Death (1953)
On Fairy-Stories (1947)
Sigelwara Land parts I and II (1932-4)
Tolkien on Tolkien (1966)
fiction
Farmer Giles of Ham (1949)
The Hobbit (1937)
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953)
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945)
Leaf by Niggle (1945)
The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955)
Smith of Wootton Major (1967)
poetry
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962)
The Road Goes Ever On (1967)
Songs for the Philologists (1936)
translations
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925)
Sir Orfeo (1944)
gallery
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basic biography
Born on January 3, 1892 in South Africa, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien spent his early years among his family in the foreign climate. A few years later his younger brother was born, and then his father died. Left practically destitute, his mother managed to arrange for them to return home to England.
It was there that the Catholic Church took him under their wing. He was recognized as a gifted child and sent to school on scholarship. His mother grew increasingly ill and the entire family depended more and more upon the Church who looked after them with warmth and charity.
Tolkien's greatest talent was in linguistics. He was not only facile at it, he loved it. Unfortunately, while he was young, he developed a crush on a young lady. He was only sixteen at the time, but pledged himself to her devotion. Meanwhile he went to school at Oxford and by 1915 achieved his degree. He finally married his boyhood crush a year later, just as he signed up to join the war effort. He watched his closest friends die one after the other, until only one was left. As a result he became ill and was reduced to home service.
In 1917, his son John was born, and Tolkien began finding odd jobs here and their to do with his linguistic interest. Finally he was asked to become a professor at Oxford. He began writing various books, and eventually began publishing some projects he had been working on here and there throughout his life. Though most known for his fantasy works, he gave a series of important essays on literature and criticism which should not be overlooked.
He retired in 1969 and his wife died soon after. Tolkien returned to Oxford and died on the 2 of September, 1973. Their gravestone is marked with the most famous couple of the War of the Jewels:
Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889-1971
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973
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