John D. Rateliff, Ph.D. is an American author and scholar of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and other members of The Inklings, also involved with literature accompanying Dungeons and Dragons. An expert on the development of The Hobbit, he completed the extensive two-volume work The History of The Hobbit: Mr Baggins and Return to Bag-End in 2007, and would write the section concerning The Hobbit in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien (2014), edited by Stuart D. Lee.
He helped organize the collection of Tolkienian works at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is among many other Tolkien experts that given lectures there on Tolkien and the Middle-earth legendarium, such as Holly Ordway and John Garth.
Rateliff has helped produce two essay collections honoring Tolkien scholars, Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger, respectively: Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey in 2008 (with John Wm. Houghton, Janet Brennan Croft, and others) and A Wilderness of Dragons: Essays in Honor of Verlyn Flieger, in 2018. He contributed an essay to Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie Donovan's 2015 compilation Perilous and Fair: Women in J.R.R. Tolkien's Work and Life.
External links[]
- Sacnoth's Scriptorium, Rateliff's official website
- John D. Rateliff at Tolkienists.org
- Interview by Michael Martinez for Middle-earth.xenite.org,
See also[]