John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets. Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal. Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist who painted for pleasure and relaxation. He excelled at landscapes and often drew inspiration from his own stories. He illustrated many scenes from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, sometimes drawing or painting as he was writing in order to visualize the imagined scene more clearly. Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His illuminating lectures on works such as the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, illustrate his deep knowledge of ancient languages and at the same time provide new insights into peoples and legends from a remote past. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1892 to English parents. He came to England aged three and was brought up in and around Birmingham. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1915 and saw active service in France during the First World War before being invalided home. After the war he pursued an academic career teaching Old and Middle English. Alongside his professional work, he invented his own languages and began to create what he called a mythology for England; it was this ‘legendarium’ that he would work on throughout his life. But his literary work did not start and end with Middle-earth, he also wrote poetry, children’s stories and fairy tales for adults. He died in 1973 and is buried in Oxford where he spent most of his adult life.

Alan Lee is an English book illustrator and movie conceptual designer. He was born on 20 August 1947 in Middlesex, England and studied at the Ealing School of Art, specialising in illustration, and has illustrated a wide range of books, including Faeries (with Brian Froud), The Mabinogion, Castles, Merlin Dreams, The Black Ships of Troy and The Wanderings of Oysseus. He is best known for his award winning work on The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien - having done illustration work for both the books and the Peter Jackson directed movies. As of 2011, he is working on The Hobbit movies, based on Tolkien's book, again directed by Peter Jackson. Tolkien's work has inspired him ever since he read his books at an early age. Alan Lee is also inspired by nature, myth, legends and Folklore. Alan Lee draws a lot of inspiration from nature around in which he lives - he lives and works on the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon, England. Recommended articles: * http://www.endicott-studio.com/gal/ga.... * http://gaytonvanryn.blogspot.com/2011... and http://gaytonvanryn.blogspot.com/2011.... His artistic influences include: "I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators—Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists—Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion." - Alan Lee fan homepage: http://alan-lee.narod.ru/Bio.htm