"Not all those who wander are lost." - JRR Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien was a close friend of C.S. Lewis, with whom he shared membership in the literary discussion group The Inklings.

In addition to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, within his lifetime, Tolkien's published fiction includes The Silmarillion and other posthumously published books about what he called a legendarium, a fictional mythology of the remote past of Earth, called Arda, and Middle-earth (from middangeard, the lands inhabitable by Men) in particular. Most of these works were compiled from Tolkien's notes by his son Christopher Tolkien. The enduring popularity and influence of Tolkien's works have established him as the "father of the modern fantasy genre". Tolkien's other published fiction includes stories for children, not connected to his legendarium. The significance of his literary oeuvre has generated decades of "Tolkien scholarship" and research across the Western world, and a considerable resulting output of secondary literature by many scholars and enthusiasts.