British linguist born in South Africa, a scholar and famed author of the best-selling trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings.” He was noted for his twists of fantasy of war between good and evil, even though he denied it was allegorical. The world he created – secret tongues, weird species, lost hamlets, invisible mountains of arcana – became the cultural locus for everything from “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” to Led Zeppelin stomps and the games of Dungeon and Dragons and Myst.
Tolkien was a professor for 34 years at Oxford University, ordinary, frumpy and comfortable in his daily routine while his fantasy world was peopled by adventures. He was raised in South Africa until the age of four, when his dad died and his mom took him and his brother to England. In 1904 she died of diabetes and the boys were left in the care of kin. At 16, he met and fell in love with an older girl, Edith Bratt. They were later to marry, in 1916, and have four kids. The two great loves in his life were Edith – and words, first writing “The Hobbit” for his own children and it was published in 1937. The second book was 17 years later, the hulking trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings.”
He and Edith were a close couple up to her death at 82, in 1971. Tolkien died of complications of an ulcer and chest infection on 2 September 1973, Bournemouth, England.
The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in the Lord of the Rings saga, was released on 19 December 2001 (world premiere 10 December) in 10,000 theaters around the world, amid a flurry of critical raves.
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