Tolkien was an English writer and philologist.
He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre.
This has caused him to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy.
