AllMovie

While he was a celebrated scholar who taught literature and history at Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien made his greatest mark on the world relatively late in life -- he was 45 years old when he published a fantasy story for youngsters entitled The Hobbit, and 62 when he completed a three-volume series of novels which once again dealt with the magical creatures of his imagined "Middle-earth," entitled The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien and the Birth of The Lord of the Rings is a documentary which chronicles the life and work of this late-blooming literary hero and how he brought to the world one of the most celebrated and enduring mythic tales of the 20th century.