Jared Lobdell

Dr. Jared Charles Lobdell (born November 29, 1937 in New York) is an American literary critic, professor, and author who has written books and articles on many different subjects, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, George Orwell, C.S. Lewis, and some of the Inklings.

In 1975, he compiled the first edition of A Tolkien Compass: Fascinating Studies and Interpretations of J.R.R. Tolkien's Most Popular Epic Fantasies, a collection of essays on Tolkien's works by eleven other professors and writers. In 1981 he authored England and Always: Tolkien's World of the Rings, a look at Tolkien's personal influences. In 2004 Lobdell wrote The World of the Rings: Language, Religion, and Adventure in Tolkien. A year later, he wrote The Rise of Tolkienian Fantasy.

Throughout the 1990's, he wrote a few works of fiction.

In 2006, Lobdell contributed alongside many Tolkien scholars to Michael D. C. Drout's reference work The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment.

In 2010, he contributed also to Paul Kerry and Sandra Miesel's essay collection Light Beyond All Shadow. Then in 2016, he wrote the two closing essays of Thomas Honegger and Maureen F. Mann 's collection Laughter in Middle-earth: Humour in and around the Works of JRR Tolkien.

Lobdell was a guest speaker at the New York Tolkien Conference in 2015.