Mark Atherton

Mark Atherton is Senior College Lecturer in English language and literature at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford. From 2016 to 2017 he spent a year as Visiting Professor in English Medieval Studies at HHU University of Düsseldorf. He is author of There and Back Again: J. R. R. Tolkien and the Origins of The Hobbit (2012) and various shorter pieces on Tolkien and Old English. His interest in Tolkien draws on his publications on philology and the study of language in the nineteenth century, and on early medieval English history and literature. He is the author of the following monographs: The Making of England (2017), Complete Old English, 3rd edition (2019), and most recently The Battle of Maldon: War and Peace in Tenth-Century England (2021). He followed this up with a further article on the use of rhyme in the poem The Battle of Maldon and a field study based on travels in East Anglia and Essex: a ‘landscape biography’ of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, the hero of the poem.