John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where his father had moved his family in order to take a position in a bank. However, life in South Africa proved too hard for his mother, who returned to the area of Birmingham, England, with her two sons. Both parents died before the boys reached their teens, and Tolkien and his brother were entrusted to the care of a Roman Catholic priest, who served as their guardian until they were of age. Tolkien graduated from Oxford in 1915 and subsequently served in World War I. In 1917 he began to write "The Book of Lost Tales," which served as the germ of the idea that bore fruit later in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and which was published sixty years later as The Silmarillion.

While the general public came to know...