I just finished reading a biography of Tolkien that was posted on the Tolkien society website. It was an amazing story of a man that I thought I knew. His full name is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and growing up most of his friends called him Ronald. Interestingly, the name "Tolkien" is German in origin and means "foolishly brave" or "stupidly clever". He was actually born in South Africa on January 3, 1892. His memories of South Africa are few, but there was an encounter with an enormous spider that would influence his writing later (such as the spiders in The Hobbit and the enormous spider at the end of the Lord of the Rings). When he was four his father died and they moved back to England. Then in 1904 his mother was diagnosed with diabetes and died (this being, of course, before insulin). He and his brother were taken care of by the family priest. His gift for languages was becoming readily apparent. At the time he was roughly twelve or thirteen he had already mastered Latin and Greek and was learning others including Gothic and Finnish. I can't imagine having mastered both Latin and Greek by the age of thirteen even if, as was the case with Tolkien, they were part of the curriculum!
At the age of 16 he met Edith Warton, 19, and they became very close. Father Francis, worried at this development, forbade Tolkien to have any contact with Edith until he was 21. He obeyed the Father's wish to the letter, immersing himself in his classes at Oxford. As soon as he turned 21 he sought out Edith and they picked up their relationship (although it probably wasn't that easy).
When war broke out Tolkien didn't enlist right away, preferring instead to work on the languages he was creating. In 1915 he enlisted as a second lieutenant, but did not leave immediately. In June of 1916, after being given orders that were to send him to France, he and Edith were married. He was sent to the Western front just in time for the Somme offensive. He spent four months in the trenches before succumbing to trench fever. He was in the hospital for a month before he was well enough to return home. While in the trenches he started The Book of Lost Tales, which wasn't published until after he had died. He wrote these stories " . .. in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire [ Letters 66]. "
In 1918 after several reoccurring bouts of his illness he was appointed the post of Reader (basically professor) in English Language at the University of Leeds. While there he and a friend developed the Viking Club for undergraduate students, where they basically sat around and read Norse sagas while drinking beer. He rarely wrote scholastically although his most famous is "Beowulf, the Monsters, and the Critics".
He had three sons, John, Michael, and Christopher, and one daughter Priscilla. He was one of the founding members of "The Inklings", a group of Oxford friends, that included C.S. Lewis, who became one of Tolkien's best friends. I thought it was interesting that though we ooh and aah over the religious symbolism in Lewis's novels, it was Tolkien that helped bring him back to Christianity after the war.
As for starting The Hobbit, "However, according to his own account, one day when he was engaged in the soul-destroying task of marking examination papers, he discovered that one candidate had left one page of an answer-book blank. On this page, moved by who knows what anarchic daemon, he wrote In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. In typical Tolkien fashion, he then decided he needed to find out what a Hobbit was, what sort of a hole it lived in, why it lived in a hole, etc." He then told the story to his children before deciding to send it to a publisher. The publisher, Stanely Unwin, presented the story to his ten-year-old son Rayner, to test it on. Rayner loved it and it was published in 1937. Incidentally, it was Rayner who, as an adult, helped with the editing and publication of the Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien was completely taken aback by the popularity of the books, and in fact was shocked to find that he had become very rich. He is in part, greatly responsible for the immense popularity of fantasy literature today.
Tolkien died on September 2, 1973, two years after Edith. The tombstone reads:
"Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889-1971
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973
This refers to the great love poem that Tolkien wrote of the mortal man (Beren) falling in love with an elvish queen (Luthien). This poem is found in the Fellowship of the Ring and the Simirillion. He wrote it for Edith.
Forgive me for writing so much, I started reading the biography and I couldn't stop. I found his life and character fascinating. He was obviously a genius, but just as obviously quite the dreamer as well. The link for the full biography is:http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biography.html
Enjoy!
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