J. R. R. Tolkien died on 2 September 1973 while visiting friends in Bournemouth. He was 81 and had returned to Oxford the previous year after the death of his wife Edith.

Tolkien was internationally known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. However, fiction occupied only part of his working life. He spent much of his career at the University of Oxford, specialising in Old and Middle English. From 1925 to 1945 he was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. He then became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, remaining in the post until his retirement in 1959.

The Hobbit appeared in 1937. The Lord of the Rings followed in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, bringing Tolkien a readership far beyond his academic world.

Tolkien and Edith moved away from Oxford in 1968. Edith died in Bournemouth in November 1971 after 55 years of marriage. Tolkien returned to Oxford in 1972 and lived in a flat provided by Merton College.

He continued working on the collection of stories and histories that became The Silmarillion; however, it remained incomplete before his death. His son Christopher Tolkien edited the material, and The Silmarillion was published in 1977.

Tolkien was buried with Edith at Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford. Their gravestone also bears the names Beren and Lúthien, two characters from a story Tolkien had worked on in different forms during his life.