Middle-earth is the setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the Miðgarðr of Norse mythology and Middangeard in Old English works, including Beowulf. Middle-earth is the human-inhabited world, that is, the central continent of the Earth, in Tolkien's imagined mythological past. Tolkien's most widely read works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, are set entirely in Middle-earth. "Middle-earth" has also become a short-hand term for Tolkien's legendarium, his large body of fantasy writings, and for the entirety of his fictional world.
A detail of Middle-earth in one of Peter Jackson's film sets
Medieval Christian cosmology: heaven above, earth in the middle, hell below. Vank Cathedral, Isfahan.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien in the 1920s
1892 Christmas card with a coloured photo of the Tolkien family in Bloemfontein, sent to relatives in Birmingham, England
Birmingham Oratory, where Tolkien was a parishioner and altar boy (1902–1911)
King Edward's School in Birmingham, where Tolkien was a pupil (1900–1902, 1903–1911)