J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) spent his career as an Oxford philologist: Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945, then Merton Professor of English Language and Literature until he retired in 1959. He translated Beowulf in the 1920s, though he did not publish it, and belonged to the Inklings, the informal Oxford literary group that included his close friend C. S. Lewis. While convalescing in Staffordshire he began The Book of Lost Tales, starting with The Fall of Gondolin, and the mythology and invented languages he kept rewriting for decades became what he called his legendarium.

The Hobbit began as a story for his own children; it reached the London publisher George Allen & Unwin in 1936 and came out in 1937. Its sequel grew into The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien meant as a single work but which was issued for economic reasons in three volumes between July 1954 and October 1955. After his death his son Christopher edited The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980) and the multi-volume History of Middle-earth from his manuscripts. Tolkien was appointed CBE in 1972.

Start with The Hobbit, not The Silmarillion, even though BookList4u's list puts The Silmarillion first. That list follows Middle-earth's internal chronology. The Silmarillion is a compressed history, from the creation of the world through the First Age, and its critics singled out the archaic language and the number of hard-to-remember names. The Hobbit is a children's novel and the book through which Tolkien first introduced readers to Middle-earth.

Then read The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King back to back as one story. Come to The Silmarillion afterward, when the older history behind The Lord of the Rings has something to attach to; Unfinished Tales is the next step after that.