the life story
Reuel Tolkien
John Ronald
When Tolkien was three, he went to England with his mother and brother on what was intended to be a lengthy family visit.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in the Republic of South Africa), to Arthur Reuel Tolkien and his wife Mabel, née Suffield.
The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked.
The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked.
Tolkien's early years
Arthur Reuel Tolkien
Arthur Reuel Tolkien was a bank clerk and ended up moving to Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, where he became manager of the Bloemfontein branch of the Bank of Africa.
Mabel Tolkien
Mabel Tolkien converted to Catholicism despite vehement protests by her Baptist family who then stopped all financial assistance to her.
His father, however, died in South Africa of rheumatic fever before he could join them. This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took him to live with her parents in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole, then a Worcestershire village.
Loss of parents
Nine years after her death, Tolkien wrote:
My own dear mother was a martyr indeed, and it is not to everybody that God grants so easy a way to his great gifts as he did to Hilary and myself, giving us a mother who killed herself with labour and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith.
In 1904, when J. R. R. Tolkien was 12, his mother died of acute diabetes.
Mabel Tolkien was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1900 despite vehement protests by her Baptist family, which stopped all financial assistance to her.
Before her death, Mabel Tolkien had assigned the guardianship of her sons to her close friend, Father Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory, who was assigned to bring them up as good Catholics.
King Edward's School
After his mother's death, Tolkien grew up in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham and attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, and later St Philip's School. In 1903, he won a Foundation Scholarship and returned to King Edward's.
In 1911, Tolkien went on a summer holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollects vividly in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo's journey across the Misty Mountains is directly based on his adventures as their party of 12 hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and on to camp in the moraines beyond Mürren.
Switzerland
In 1911, Tolkien went on a summer holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollects vividly in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo's journey across the Misty Mountains is directly based on his adventures as their party of 12 hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and on to camp in the moraines beyond Mürren.
Switzerland
In October of the same year, Tolkien began studying at Exeter College, Oxford. He initially read classics but changed his course in 1913 to English language and literature, graduating in 1915 with first-class honours.
College
At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, who was three years his senior, when he and his brother Hilary moved into the boarding house where she lived. Both were orphans in need of affection, and they found that they could give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love
His guardian, Father Morgan, considered it "altogether unfortunate" that his surrogate son was romantically involved with an older, Protestant woman; Tolkien wrote that the combined tensions contributed to his having "muffed [his] exams". Morgan prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with Edith until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed this prohibition to the letter.
On 8 January 1913, Tolkien travelled by train to Cheltenham and was met on the platform by Edith. The two took a walk into the countryside, sat under a railway viaduct, and talked. By the end of the day, Edith had agreed to accept Tolkien's proposal. She wrote to Field and returned her engagement ring.
Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were formally engaged at Birmingham in January 1913, and married at St Mary Immaculate Catholic Church at Warwick, on 22 March 1916.
At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, who was three years his senior, when he and his brother Hilary moved into the boarding house where she lived. Both were orphans in need of affection, and they found that they could give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love
His guardian, Father Morgan, considered it "altogether unfortunate" that his surrogate son was romantically involved with an older, Protestant woman; Tolkien wrote that the combined tensions contributed to his having "muffed [his] exams". Morgan prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with Edith until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed this prohibition to the letter.
On 8 January 1913, Tolkien travelled by train to Cheltenham and was met on the platform by Edith. The two took a walk into the countryside, sat under a railway viaduct, and talked. By the end of the day, Edith had agreed to accept Tolkien's proposal. She wrote to Field and returned her engagement ring.
Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were formally engaged at Birmingham in January 1913, and married at St Mary Immaculate Catholic Church at Warwick, on 22 March 1916.
"Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then... it was like a death."
To evade the British Army's postal censorship, he developed a code of dots by which Edith could track his movements.
In August 1914, Britain entered the First World War. On 2 June 1916, Tolkien received a telegram summoning him to Folkestone for posting to France.
He later wrote:
He later wrote:
Tolkien arrived at the Somme in early July 1916. In between terms behind the lines at Bouzincourt, he participated in the assaults on the Schwaben Redoubt and the Leipzig salient. On 27 October 1916, as his battalion attacked Regina Trench, Tolkien contracted trench fever.
the First World War
He was invalided to England on 8 November 1916. Many of his dearest school friends were killed in the war. Tolkien's battalion was almost completely wiped out following his return to England.
Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps.
Home
It was at this time that Edith bore their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien.
Academic and writing career
His first civilian job after World War I was at the Oxford English Dictionary, where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter W.
In 1920, he took up a post as reader in English language at the University of Leeds, becoming the youngest member of the academic staff there.
In 1925, he returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, with a fellowship at Pembroke College
Wizard
Wondrous
Writer
Word
Wonderful
Wisdom
World
Tolkien not only wrote books, but also made magical illustrations
During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings
In 1945, Tolkien moved to Merton College, Oxford, becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959. He served as an external examiner for University College, Galway (now NUI Galway), for many years.
Tolkien completed The Lord of the Rings in 1948, close to a decade after the first sketches
According to Tolkien's plan, The Silmarillion should have been published at the same time as The Lord of the Rings, but the publishing house did not go for it. The publisher agreed to publish the novel in its entirety, without cuts in 1952.
In 1961, Clive S. Lewis lobbied for Tolkien's Nobel Prize in Literature. However, Swedish academics rejected the nomination with the wording that Tolkien's books "cannot be called in any way first-class prose"
"Tolkien boom"
In the early 1960s, The Lord of the Rings was released in the United States and was a resounding commercial success. The novel fell on fertile ground: the youth of the 1960s, carried away by the hippie movement and the ideas of peace and freedom, saw in the book the embodiment of many of their dreams.
The values articulated by Tolkien were ideally suited for the 1960s counterculture movements
Final years
In the same year Oxford University gave him an honorary Doctorate of Letters.
Tolkien was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1972 New Year Honours and received the insignia of the Order at Buckingham Palace on 28 March 1972.
Edith died on 29 November 1971, at the age of 82. Ronald returned to Oxford, where Merton College gave him convenient rooms near the High Street. He missed Edith, but enjoyed being back in the city.
He had the name Luthien engraved on Edith's tombstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford.
After Tolkien's death, an anonymous obituary appears in The New York Times, or rather, an outline of his life. This short text is considered the best written about Tolkien.
When Tolkien died 21 months later on 2 September 1973, he was buried in the same grave, with Beren added to his name.
Modern researchers have found out that this text belongs to Clive Staples Lewis.
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