Tom Shippey has taught at six universities in the United Kingdom and the United States, including Oxford and Harvard. He is well-known for his writings on medieval literature and on the way that literature has been re-created in modern times—notably by Professor J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he followed as chair of English language and medieval literature at the University of Leeds. He is the author of many books, including The Road to Middle-Earth, J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, and Hard Reading: Learning from Science Fiction, as well as the editor of The Critical Heritage: Beowulf and The Shadow-Walkers: Jacob Grimm's Mythology of the Monstrous.