J. R. R. Tolkien J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, (; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is 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
The Lord of the Rings of the Beatles. British director John Boorman also tried to make an adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings" for United Artists in 1970. After the script was written, which included many changes to the story and the characters, the production company scrapped the project, thinking it too expensive and too risky. Two film adaptations of the book have been made. The first was "J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings" (1978), by animator Ralph Bakshi, the first part of what was originally intended to be a two-part adaptation of the story; it covers "The Fellowship of the