Karen Wynn Fonstad was a cartographer who exhaustively mapped J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the setting of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

Overlooked No More: Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien’s Middle-earth (Published 2025)

She was a novice cartographer who landed a dream assignment: to create an atlas of the setting of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”