Tolkien in 1971 at the age of 79.

JRR Tolkien lived until his eightieth year before reaching fame with his fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings. One of the most successful literary phenomena the world has ever known, it has sold many millions of copies, been translated into a hit series of films and spawned some of the saddest fantasy artwork ever seen.

How did Tolkien come to create his great land of goblins and elks, Morlocks and Ewoks? To find the answer we have to go back to his childhood in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

Childhood Tragedy
Born in 1890, John Roger Roger Tolkien's early years in South Africa were uneventful. His mother, an African Princess and circus contortionist, committed suicide in a tragic accident in the ring. She was buried in a square coffin only two feet on each side, in a ceremony presided over by his father, an Anglican priest with transvestite tendencies.

One of Tolkien's first drawings, of an elf, revealing the heartache he suffered after the death of his mother.

After this tragedy the family moved to England, where Tolkien studied Anglo-saxon philosophy at Oxbridge University, Cambridge. There he met Malcom Muggeridge, who was to have a great influence expanding the youngster's developing mind. In 1981 Muggeridge recalled:

"One saw this tanned, slim chap across the playing field, talking gaily to some college triple-jumpers. From the angle of his stance I could tell he had a sizeable intellect, and I knew at once that he would be a firm friend."

Muggeridge took young John under his wing, and they studied the classics together late into the night. For his final year Tolkien specialized in Chaucer, writing the foreword to the 1915 edition of The Aromatherapist's Tale which won the Nobel Prize for Most inpenitrable Foreword in 1930.

Influences
After graduating Tolkien taught at the university for a further forty years, alongside such luminaries as CS Lewis (author of The Chronic Narnia) and Charles Williams, inventor of black boot polish. These friends created a writing club called The Inklings, and thus, immersed in academia, Tolkien began to confuse English folklore and mythology with real life. Constantly spurred on by his equally sexually frustrated academic colleagues, he invented the fantasy world of Middle Earth, the language of the Elves, characters like Aragorn the Straddler, Bent Bob Bombadil, and the evil Cygons.

The Hobbit
His first book, The Hobbit, was published in 1937. Primarily a story for children, it concerned the journey of little Bilbo Baggins, who finds a terrible ring of power, puts it on his finger and comes over all queer. Chased by evil alien Gollum, Baggins drops the ring in a puddle and goes back home.

The Lord of the Rings
Following on from this, Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings was a work for adults. It was published in three parts, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers (named, with extraordinary lack of sensitivity, after the terrible events in New York over forty years later), and The Return of The King. In this tale Bilbo's son Frodo discovers the ring and runs across Middle Earth, chased once again by Gollum and the Dark Lord Saruman. Due to its success with ordinary people it proved unpopular with critics. Donald Humphrey in the Daily Telegraph wrote:

"Peopled by such fantastic creatures as Elves and Orcs, living in a place called 'Middle Earth' are we really supposed to believe that such things could happen? No, of course not, these things have come from an imagination so fevered that one fears for the man's sanity. The whole outrageous tale is broken by only the briefest turgid passages. If this marks a departure from the English literary tradition which favours worrisome upper class dinner party guests and trips to lighthouses which take a lifetime to happen, then I for one will be sorry. Imagination be damned!"

Fans like to dress up as characters from Middle Earth, at Tolkien conventions.

The Silmarillion
Tolkien struggled to complete his last great work — The Silmarillion — before his death. Told in quasi-biblical language, it chronicles the legend of the thirteen Silmarils through three hundred centuries of Middle Earth history. On publication it received mixed reviews. Some say it contains some of the most sublimely beautiful prose-poetry published in English:

Fonwé Urion son of Manwe, love of Urüwan shalt in time be Melko's bane, and such things shalt be thusly and in this wise told in the hearts of men. The time is not ready for the rising forth, obtained through Ulmo with the help of Uïn, across a magic bridge of Sound. Now, Thingol said, therefore we must hence toward the Encircling Mountains afore Amon Gwáreth releases his monsters of Iron including them Balrogs and that. I'm up for that, said Uïn, and off they went.
— The Fall of Turambar and the Foalókë

Others say that it's the product of a man with a poor social life and too much time on his hands. However, the book became a cult hit with the new breed of students, who read into the tales a philosophy of free love and drug worship, or anything they fancied doing. Such was the appetite for The Silmarillion that on the day of publication, over twelve copies were sold (although most were subsequently returned).

The Legacy
This was just the start of the Tolkien phenomenon. During his lifetime he had amassed an enormous body of work. Under the editorship of his son Christopher, these archives were posthumously published as The History of Middle Earth in 237 volumes, with a twelve volume index and 320-volume glossary. To date only one complete set has been sold, as part of a book club introductory offer.

Tolkien died in 1972. In his will he left his entire estate to King Aïnwèlint of the Forest of Mablüng.

Bibliography
The Hobbit (1937)
The Lord of the Rings (1955)
The Silmarillion (1972)
Published posthumously
Sir Gawain, the Green Knight and Other Crappy Poems (1973)
The Book of Lost And Subsequently Rediscovered Tales I-23 (1974-2002)

A scene from The Two Towers movie adaptation. Note the Tower of Isinguard in the distance. The elves have been superimposed using state-of-the-art blue-screen effects.

The Lays of Benylin (1975)
Unfinished Tales (1977)
The Tolkien Desk Diary (1980-2002)
Middle Earth Calendar (1980-2002)
The Post-it Notes of JRR Tolkien (1987)
Poor Soil: Gardening in Mordor (1997)
Frodo Baggins' DIY Secrets (2000)
Gandalf's Book of the World Cup 2002 (2002)
Unstarted Tales (NYP)