J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), the famous British professor, author, and creator of Middle-earth, the setting for much of his fantasy, is known and loved by many. But few may know of his formative years as an undergraduate at University of Oxford, from 1911-1915, where he first studied Classics and then switched to English.. He arrived at Oxford in the Fall of 1911 as just “a bright young man”, and by “the time he left in 1915, the world had gone to war. Tolkien had reached full and independent adulthood, was engaged to be married, and had switched to English, his true academic vocation. He had also started a sequence of visionary artworks and a flood of poetry, varied and vivid. And leaving the creative pursuits of others fares behind, he had begun inventing both a language and a world for it to describe: the world he later called Middle-earth.” [1] 

[1]. John Garth, Tolkien at Exeter College, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Exeter College, 2022), 5.