The famous writer, poet, philologist, professor at Oxford University John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. It was he who gave the world the wonderful books "The Hobbit, or There and Back", "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion", which formed a modern view of works in the fantasy genre.

In 1900, Tolkien entered King Edward's School, where he learned Old English and began to study others - Welsh, Old Norse, Finnish, Gothic. He showed linguistic talent early, and after studying Old Dutch and Finnish, he began to develop "Elvish" languages.

Even as a child, John and his comrades came up with several languages to communicate with each other. This passion for learning existing languages and designing new ones remained with him for the rest of his life. Tolkien is the creator of several artificial languages: Quenya, or the language of the high elves; Sindarin - the language of the gray elves. Tolkien knew several dozen languages, composed new languages, largely guided by the beauty of the sound. He himself said: "No one believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which the language corresponding to my personal aesthetics could turn out to be natural. However, it's true."

In 1908 he met his future wife Edith Mary Brett, who had a great influence on his work. The engagement took place in Birmingham in January 1913, and the wedding took place on March 22, 1916. The couple lived together for 56 years and raised 3 sons and a daughter.

Tolkien held the positions of Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He was also the Merton Professor of English and Literature at Merton College.

After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher published several works based on his father's extensive corpus of notes and unpublished manuscripts, including “The Silmarillion”. This book, together with “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”, makes up a single collection of fairy tales, poems, stories, artificial languages and literary essays about the fictional world called Arda and its parts of Middle-earth.

Many authors wrote works in the fantasy genre before Tolkien, however, due to the great popularity and strong influence on the genre, many call Tolkien the "father" of modern fantasy literature, mainly referring to "high fantasy".

In 2008, a British newspaper ranked him sixth in the list of "The 50 Greatest British writers since 1945". In 2009, the American magazine named him the fifth among the deceased celebrities with the largest income.

Nazira Artykbayeva, librarian of the International Book Department