Professor Tolkien was born in South Africa. The surviving family were forced home after the death of his father and Tolkien found himself in the army during the first world war. This provided the background to his initial background notes to what became Middle Earth. The background to Middle Earth also came out of Professor Tolkien's love of languages and the various languages and alphabets that make up the background to both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit were developed over decades of work stolen from his academic work, also in the field of linguistics. The pinnacle of this career was reached in 1945 when he was appointed as Merton Professor of English, at Oxford University. He retired from this post in 1959. While at Oxford during the interwar years, he, along with CS Lewis and a number of other people, formed the literary association that became known as The Inklings. It was readings at these meetings that fleshed out his initial notes into the form that became known as Middle Earth.
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