THE FALL OF GONDOLIN

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, was a philologist and writer, best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. He worked as reader and professor in English language at the University of Leeds, as professor of Anglo-Saxon language at the University of Oxford, and of English language and literature from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C.S. Lewis, and a member of the Inklings, a literary discussion group to which both Lewis and Owen Barfield belonged.

Tolkien created the Legendarium, a fictional mythology about the remote past of Earth, here called Arda, of which Middle-earth in particular is the main stage. Parts of his Legendarium are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion and The History of Middle-earth series (published by his son, Christopher Tolkien, posthumously) revealed Tolkien's lifelong work on that same Legendarium, a process which he called "sub-creation". Tolkien's other published works include philological essays, modern adaptations of medieval literature and rendering of stories originally told to his children but not directly related to the Legendarium.