J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa on the 3rd of January 1892. His memories of South Africa were few but included an incident with a large scary spider which seemed to have influenced his later writings to a slight extent. On 15 February 1896 his father died, and he, his mother and his younger brother Hilary went back to England.

In 1904 Tolkien's mother Mabel was diagnosed with diabetes (incurable at the time) and died on 15 October, leaving John and his brother Hilary as orphans. Even at this early age Tolkien was demonstrating remarkable linguistic gifts. He had learn Latin and Greek and was more then competent in various other modern and ancient languages like gothic and Finnish.

When Tolkien was 16 he developed a friendly relationship with 19 year old Edith Bratt at his boarding house. A relationship which deepened and caused Father Francis to forbid Tolkien to see or communicate with Edith for three years (until he was 21). Subsequently Tolkien went up to Exeter College, Oxford in 1911 where he studied the Classics, Old English, Germanic languages, Welsh and Finish until 1913 when he attempted to pick up where his relationship with Edith left off.

He obtained a less then desirable second class degree in Honour Moderations but managed and an "a plus" in philology. Subsequently he changed school from Classics to English Language and Literature. In his Old English studies he came across the poem Crist of Cynewulf and was intrigued with the cryptic couplet:

Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast
Ofer middangeard monnum sended

- "Hail Earendel brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men ". ("Middangeard" is an ancient expression used to describe the everyday world between Heaven and Hell).  In his latter writings middle-earth was a land situated between lands of darkness and peaceful beauty.

At the outbreak of war, Tolkien did not rush to join up immediately like so many at the time, rather he went back to Oxford and obtained a first class degree in June 1915 after much hard work. It was around this time that he also begun to work on languages of his own invention, most noteably the one he called Quenya.

Tolkien eventually enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers but still managed to work on ideas of Earendel the Mariner, who became a star, and his journeyings. On 22 March 1916 Tolkien and Edith married after it became clear he would soon have to head to France. Tolkien was sent to the Western Front, in time for the Somme offensive.

After four months in the trenches he fell ill with trench fever in early November and was sent back to England. There he spent the next month in a Birmingham hospital. Tolkien had lost all but one of his close friends to the war. His war experiences influenced a series of stories that he begun to put into shape and was eventually known as the Book of Lost Tales. This collection of stories held the first recorded writings of wars against Morgoth, the fall of Gondolin and Nargothron and Tales of Túrin, Beren and Lúthien.

During 1917 and 1918 his recurring ilnness restricted him to performing home services at various camps which saw him promoted to lieutenant. While stationed at Hull, Tolkien and his wife edith went walking through the woods of Roos. It was there in a grove thick with hemlock that Edith danced for him. It was the inspiration of the tale of Beren and Lúthien.

There first son, Jon francis Ruel was born on 16 November 1917. After the war Tolkien was appointed Assistant Lexicographer on the New English Dictionary (the "OXford English Dictionary"). In 1920 he succesfully aplied for the post of reader (Associate Professor) in English Language at the University of Leeds. He became the father of Michael Hilary Reuel in October 1920 and Christopher Reuel in 1924. In 1925 he became the Rawlinson and bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. 1929 saw the birth of there last child, Priscilla.

Tolkien was constantly developoing his mythology and languages. He enjoyed telling his chiildren stories, many of which he published sucha s Mr. Bliss and Roverandom.

According to his own account, one day he was marking school examination papers and discovered a blank page in which he wrote "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit". These were of course the first words of a story that later became known as The Hobbit (or There and Back Again). In 1936 an incomplete copy was picked up by Susan Dagnall who worked for th publishing firm George Allen and Unwin (who merged with HarperCollins in 1990).

Susan asked if Tolkien could finish it and eventually presented the complete story to the Chairman of the firm who read it to his 10 year old son Rayner. The tale was well received and was published as The Hobbit in 1937. Tolkien had been developing what would later be called the Quenta Silmarillion (or Silmarillion for short), an account of the legends and history of a world known as Arda upon which Middle-earth existed. Tolkien had always said that he felt that he wasn't raelly inventing anything but 'recording what was already there.' It wasn't until the hobbit was completed that he realized hints of this middle-earth had begun to show up in the Hobbit.

The Silmarillion was greeted with mixed reactions, much of the poetry was disliked and the final decision was that the work was not commercialy publishable. Unwin brought the disapointing news to Tolkien and again asked if a sequel to The Hobbit could be written.

The Lord of the Rings was written to mixed reviews. People like W.H. Auden and C.S. Lewis regarded it as magnificent while E. Wilson, E. Muir, P. Toynbee crtisized it heavily with many reviews falling somewhere in between.

It was when the Lord of the rings went to a pirated paperback version in 1965 that things became interesting. The copyright dispute brought the attention of millions of American readers to the book and became the fiction of choice for an alternative society. Tolkien was flattered the book was receiving so much attention and did not complain at the money it brough him. However, Tolkien was clearly uncomfortable at the trend of reading his book while under the influence of LSD. Many of Tolkiens fans became significanly annoying and troublesome with some ringing up at all hours of the morning to ask him if Balrogs had wings or questions of equal significance.

Tolkien retired in 1969 and moved with his wife Edith to Bournemouth. On the 22nd of November, 1971 Edith passed away and Tolkien soon moved back to Oxford. Ronald died two years later on the 2 September 1973. He is burried together with edith in a single grave of Wolvercote cemetery in Oxford.

The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien came to book stores in 1977 and three yeras later Christopher published the Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (a collection Tolkiens incomplete work).

He will never be forgotten.