The Professor's Long Victory

On July 29, 1954, a sixty-two-year-old Oxford professor named J. R. R. Tolkien saw his life's work finally reach the public when Allen & Unwin published The Fellowship of the Ring in London. Tolkien had labored over the manuscript for twelve years, writing much of it during the dark days of World War II while his own son Christopher served with the Royal Air Force in South Africa.…