In the second half of the 19th - first half of the 20th centuries, several masterpieces of children's literature appeared in England, which not only influenced the development of this genre throughout the world, but also took their rightful place among the “adult” classics: just remember “Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll or "Peter Pan" by James Barrie. In this series, a special place is occupied by the story “The Hobbit” and the trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”, the works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973), an Oxford professor, specialist in the history of the English language and German mythology. There have always been many people in the world endowed with a rich poetic imagination, but, perhaps, no one before him was able to embody his own cosmogony with such artistic power and persuasiveness. For many people, the world created by Tolkien’s imagination, where peace-loving hobbits and the wondrous people of elves coexist with the terrible Nazgûl and dragons, has become a very real alternative to the reality of the second half of the last century with all its technical and computer progress. As Tolkien himself wrote: “A fairyland is not an allegory. It is perceived as something that really exists beyond the imagination.” Books about Middle-earth spurred the development of the fantasy genre, which became one of the leading genres in entertainment literature in the second half of the 20th century.