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
Translations of The Lord of the Rings Translations of The Lord of the Rings "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien, written originally in English, has since been translated, with varying degrees of success, into dozens of other languages. Tolkien, an expert in Germanic philology, scrutinized those that were under preparation during his lifetime, and had comments that reflect both the translation process and his work. To aid translators, and because he was unhappy with some choices made by early translators such as Åke Ohlmarks, Tolkien wrote his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings in 1967 (released publicly in 1975