J. R. R. Tolkien
Influence

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence and the shaping of the modern fantasy genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature —or, more precisely, of high fantasy, as in the work of authors such as Ursula Le Guin and her Earthsea series. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". His influence has extended to music, including the Danish group the Tolkien Ensemble 's setting of all the poetry in The Lord of the Rings to their vocal music; and to a broad range of games set in Middle-earth. Among literary allusions to Tolkien, he appears as the elderly "Professor J. B. Timbermill" in all five novels in J. I. M. Stewart 's series A Staircase in Surrey. The scholar Tom Shippey describes Tolkien as the "author of the century", and states that "I do not think any modern writer of epic fantasy has managed to escape the mark of Tolkien, no matter how hard many of them have tried". John Clute, writing in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, similarly credits Tolkien with being "the twentieth-century's single most important author of fantasy". His work has had a massive impact on western pop culture, and remains extremely influential.
change_case:english_lowercase, length_constraints:number_words[418]