The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit were both written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, a writer, poet, and philologist. He was a major scholar in the English language and specialized in Old and Middle English. He was born on January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein in South Africa. He is the eldest child of Arthur Tolkien, an English bank manager, and Mabel, his wife. He only had one sibling, his brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien. Both were taught by their mother at home. Tolkien was able to read and write fluently at the early age of four. His mother would allow him to read as many books as he wanted. At the age of 12, his mother died of acute diabetes at Fern Cottage in Rednal, England. His mother assigned their guardianship to her close friend, Father Francis Xavier Morgan before her death, who helped bring them up as good Catholics. After the death of his mother, Tolkien grew up in Edgbaston, Birmingham in England, and attended King Edward’s School and then, later on, St. Philip’s. When he won a Foundation Scholarship in 1903, he returned to King Edwards. In his early teens, Tolkien and his cousins invented a language called Nevbosh. In 1909, he composed “The Book of Foxrook”, a sixteen-page book of the earliest example of one of his invented alphabets appeared. Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt when he was sixteen. She was then three years her senior. He met her when he and his brother, Hilary moved to another boarding house, the same as hers, in Duchess Road, Edgbaston. The two were officially in a relationship in 1909. His guardian, Father Morgan did not support him being romantically involved with Edith who was older than him and was also a Protestant. Because of this, Father Morgan prohibited Tolkien from meeting and talking to Edith until he was 21. When Tolkien turned 21, he wrote a letter to Edith and asked her to marry him, however, Edith already accepted the proposal of one of her closest friends’ brother, George Field. Although Edith explained to him via letter that she only accepted the proposal because she felt, “on the shelf” and wasn’t confident that Tolkien still cared for her. In 1913, Tolkien traveled to Cheltenham to meet Edith. The two talked and Edith decided to accept Tolkien’s proposal by the end of the day. She then wrote to Field and returned the engagement ring. Edith converted to being a Catholic when she got engaged to Tolkien. They got formally engaged in January of 1913 and got married in March 1916 at St. Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Warwick. In 1914, Tolkien did not volunteer for the British Army when Britain entered the First World War. He decided that he would complete his degree first, delaying his enlistment. In June 1916, he was sent to the British Expeditionary Forces. To pass the time while he was waiting for his unit, he composed a poem entitled, “The Lonely Isle,” inspired by his feelings during the sea crossing to Calais. During this time, he also wanted to keep track of Edith’s movements, so he developed a code. In 1916, Tolkien was part of the assaults on the Schwaben Redoubt and the Leipzig Salient. This became a very stressful time for Edith as she feared for her husband’s life. Edith was also able to track his movements on a map of the Western Front. In 1916, Tolkien contracted trench fever which is a disease carried by lice. He contracted the disease during his battalion’s attack on Regina Trench. On November 8, 1916, Tolkien was invalided to England, while some of his school friends were killed in the war. During Tolkien's recovery stage, he started working on his book called, “The Book of Lost Tales,” starting with, “The Fall of Gondolin,” but it was never completed. Tolkien was able to somewhat recover from his recurring illness throughout 1917 and 1918. However he was never deemed fit for general duty, and he was only able to do home service at different military camps. It was around this year that Edith and Tolkien had their firstborn, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. Tolkien got promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1918 and was taken off active service in 1919 with a temporary disability pension. He left the army in November 1920 but retained his rank as a lieutenant. Tolkien worked at the Oxford English Dictionary and worked on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter W. This was his first civilian job after World War I. He also worked as a reader in the English language at the University of Leeds, produced, “A Middle English Vocabulary,” and a definitive edition of, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” with E.V. Gordon while he was at Leeds. He returned to Oxford in 1925 as a Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, with a fellowship at Pembroke College. It was during this time that he wrote, “The Hobbit” and the first two volumes of, “The Lord of the Rings.” Tolkien also wrote a translation of “Beowulf” starting in the 1920s and finished in 1926 but never published it. It was only in 2014, 40 years after his death when his son edited and published it. Edith and Tolkien had their last child and only daughter, Priscilla in 1929. He got into the habit of writing letters to his children yearly as if they were from Santa Claus, and some of them were compiled and published as, “The Father Christmas Letters” in 1976. He also sent illustrated versions of this to his four children– John Francis Reuel Tolkien, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, and Priscila Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien when they were young. While in Oxford, Tolkien also founded “The Inklings”, a group of friends in Oxford of similar interests. During his retirement years, he also became a consultant and translator for, “The Jerusalem Bible,” particularly the Book of Jonah. He got so busy with other commitments that he only managed to offer criticisms of other contributors, despite being initially offered a larger portion to translate in, “The Jerusalem Bible.” When “The Hobbit” was published in 1937, it immediately became a success. It was so well-received that Stanley Unwin, a British publisher, asked Tolkien for a sequel. Tolkien took the challenge to create a sequel for it, prompting the start of the epic novel, “The Lord of the Rings.” It was initially published in three volumes in 1954-1955. Tolkien was also supported by his group, The Inklings, while writing, “The Lord of the Rings” which took around ten years to complete. He also received support from his friend, C.S Lewis, author of, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and also a member of, “The Inklings.” “The Lord of the Rings” became popular during the 60s and has been one of the most popular fiction novels of the 20th century. It was hailed as people’s “favorite book of the millennium” in a poll done by Amazon to its customers in 1999. According to a survey done by the BBC in 2003, “The Lord of the Rings” is also one of the best-loved novels in the UK, while Australia