The Beginning...

The Hobbit 1937 First Edition

September 21, 1937: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, CBE was first published.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (3 January 1892 - 2 September 1973) is best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and of English language and literature, also at Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was a strongly committed Roman Catholic. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, with whom he shared membership in the literary discussion group the Inklings.