J. R. R. Tolkien
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien,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, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford from 1945 to 1959.He was at one time 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After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. 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 a fantasy world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term legendarium to the larger part of these writings. While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy.
In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Forbes ranked him the 5th top-earning "dead celebrity" in 2009.
photos
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Library
http://www.tolkienlibrary.com
JRR Tolkien called teaching 'exhausting and depressing' in unseen letter
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/12/jrr-tolkien-teaching-exhausting-depressing-unseen-letter-lord-rings
JRR Tolkein who famously wrote the first line of The Hobbit while marking exam papers, told a fellow teacher that "all teaching is exhausting and depressing" in a previously unknown letter which has just come to light.
The Lord of the Rings author wrote the letter on 17 January 1964 in response to Anne Mountfield, a newly qualified teacher who was working at Eltham Green School in London. Mountfield had written to Tolkien that her "rather restless" class had been spellbound when she read them The Hobbit. Tolkien typed her a reply, saying that the story of Bilbo Baggins's adventures "seems to go down well at school".
He then added a handwritten note to the bottom of the letter, telling Mountfield that "All teaching is exhausting, and depressing and one is seldom comforted by knowing when one has had some effect. I wish I could now tell some of mine (of long ago) how I remember them and things they said, though I was (only, as it appeared) looking out of the window or giggling at my neighbour".
Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, and would mark School Certificate exams in the summers to add to his salary. In a letter to WH Auden, he wrote: "All I remember about the start of The Hobbit is sitting correcting School Certificate papers in the everlasting weariness of that annual task forced on impecunious academics with children. On the blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I did not and do not know why."
Mountfield said she had forgotten about her own letter from the author until it fell out of a copy of Tolkien's book Tree and Leaf last year, shortly after she herself had received a letter from a former pupil about the influence she had been on him. "I like to attribute the coincidence to a little touch of Gandalf magic," she said. "How right Tolkien was that teachers are seldom 'comforted by knowing that one has had some effect' and how very nice when, 50 years after the event, it happens."
The letter will be auctioned by Bonhams in London on 18 June, when it is expected to fetch up to £2,000.