J.R.R. Tolkien (1892ndash;1973), beloved throughout the world as the creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, a fellow of Pembroke College, and a fellow of Merton College until his retirement in 1959. His chief interest was the linguistic aspects of the early English written tradition, but even as he studied these classics he was creating a set of his own.
Mark Getlein arrived in New York to pursue advanced music studies at the Juilliard School, but he quickly became equally fascinated by the city's vibrant downtown art scene and magnificent museum collections. For a decade or so he led an interesting but precarious life as a pianist and painter. As a writer and development editor, he has helped to create a series of ground-breaking college textbooks in art and literature, including Art History (Abrams, 1995), A History of Art in Africa (Abrams, 2001), The HarperCollins World Reader, The Longman Anthology of British Literature, and The Longman Anthology of World Literature. This is his fourth edition as author of Living with Art.