EARLY LIFE
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on January 3, 1892. His father was a bank manager there.
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| Tolkien |
He was known to his family as Ronald. John came from his grandfather and great-grandfather, and Reuel was his father's middle name.
The family name Reuel means “son of God” in Hebrew. It was one name of Moses's father-in-law.
'Tolkien' is an anglicized version of the German 'tollkuhn' meaning 'foolhardy' or 'daredevil'.
By the age of 16, he'd lost both parents. A catholic priest Father Francis Morgan took over his upbringing.
Ronald was a student at King Edward's School in Birmingham in 1900–1902 and 1903–1911.
In October 1911, Ronald began studying at Exeter College, Oxford. He initially studied Classics but changed his course two years later to English Language and Literature, graduating in 1915 with first-class honors in his final examinations.
CAREER
Tolkien served as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers during the First World War. He fought at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, but later got trench fever and returned home.
His first job after the war was for the first edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, starting with the letter "W," from "waggle" to "warlock."
Tolkien's notes on the etymology of certain words, including "walrus," continued to puzzle him for years after his work on the OED was complete. He devoted many pages of notes to the subject, which he later used in a lecture on the subject at the University of Leeds.
Tolkien served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945.
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord Of The Rings while Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.
As an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien was proficient in over a dozen languages. Linguistics played a large role in his literature. He created 11 different tongues for his works, including Elvish, Khuzdul of the Dwarves, and Sauron's Black Speech.
He was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959.
Even though J.R.R Tolkien was only contractually obligated to teach 36 Oxford lectures a year, he taught up to 136 classes.
He was an esteemed scholastic word nerd, with an influential lecture on the epic poem Beowulf credited to his name. J.R.R. believed Beowulf was addressing human destiny in general, and that the monsters, not just the tribal politics, were essential to the poem.
Despite being a Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, Tolkien is said to have thoroughly disliked the works of Shakespeare.
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published on September 21, 1937.
The word 'hobbit' existed in English long before Tolkien, meaning a seed-basket or a local measure equal to two-and-a-half bushels.
A first edition of The Hobbit, with an inscription in Elvish written by the author, sold at auction in London in June 2015 for £137,000.
Tolkien originally set out to just create a language. Elfish. He then figured that that language needed a history. That history needed a world etc. Which eventually led to him writing Lord of the Rings in said world.
Tolkien had difficulty getting The Lord of the Rings published. The publisher expected to lose money on it. Instead, it was such a success that by Tolkien's death, he was moderately wealthy.
Tolkien got 13 pages into writing a Lord of the Rings sequel called 'The New Shadow' but abandoned it.
Tolkien didn't mean to change the spelling of "Dwarfs" to "Dwarves" in his works. He said it was a mistake that neither him nor his editors spotted.
Reading at a rate of one page a minute, it has been calculated that it takes one minute longer to read JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings than to listen to the Wagner Ring cycle.
Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, take place entirely in Middle-earth, the central continent of the Earth in Tolkien's imagined mythological past.
Tolkien's first identifiable Middle-Earth character was a Half-Elven Mariner named "Eärendil", who came from his poem "The Last Voyage of Eärendil" written in 1914.
Tolkien served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945.
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord Of The Rings while Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.
As an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien was proficient in over a dozen languages. Linguistics played a large role in his literature. He created 11 different tongues for his works, including Elvish, Khuzdul of the Dwarves, and Sauron's Black Speech.
He was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959.
Even though J.R.R Tolkien was only contractually obligated to teach 36 Oxford lectures a year, he taught up to 136 classes.
He was an esteemed scholastic word nerd, with an influential lecture on the epic poem Beowulf credited to his name. J.R.R. believed Beowulf was addressing human destiny in general, and that the monsters, not just the tribal politics, were essential to the poem.
Despite being a Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, Tolkien is said to have thoroughly disliked the works of Shakespeare.
WORKS
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published on September 21, 1937.
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| Wikipedia |
The word 'hobbit' existed in English long before Tolkien, meaning a seed-basket or a local measure equal to two-and-a-half bushels.
A first edition of The Hobbit, with an inscription in Elvish written by the author, sold at auction in London in June 2015 for £137,000.
Tolkien originally set out to just create a language. Elfish. He then figured that that language needed a history. That history needed a world etc. Which eventually led to him writing Lord of the Rings in said world.
Tolkien had difficulty getting The Lord of the Rings published. The publisher expected to lose money on it. Instead, it was such a success that by Tolkien's death, he was moderately wealthy.
Tolkien got 13 pages into writing a Lord of the Rings sequel called 'The New Shadow' but abandoned it.
Tolkien didn't mean to change the spelling of "Dwarfs" to "Dwarves" in his works. He said it was a mistake that neither him nor his editors spotted.
Reading at a rate of one page a minute, it has been calculated that it takes one minute longer to read JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings than to listen to the Wagner Ring cycle.
Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, take place entirely in Middle-earth, the central continent of the Earth in Tolkien's imagined mythological past.
Tolkien's first identifiable Middle-Earth character was a Half-Elven Mariner named "Eärendil", who came from his poem "The Last Voyage of Eärendil" written in 1914.
Tolkien was rejected for a Nobel Prize, in 1961, on the grounds of his poor storytelling.
The International Astronomical Union names all mountains on Saturn's moon Titan after locations and characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's works.
Orphaned at 16, John Tolkien went to live in a Birmingham boarding house, where he fell in love with a female lodger, Edith Mary Bratt. She was three years his senior, a good pianist, and looked like an elf.
J.R.R. courted Edith. It was a forbidden love, as he was a Catholic and she a Protestant. His guardian, Father Francis ordered him to not have any contact until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed, but remained steadfast and five years later he declared his love to Edith. She left the man to whom she was currently engaged to marry him.
They married on March 22, 1916 in the Catholic Church of St. Mary Immaculate at Warwick.
Their week-long honeymoon was spent at Clevedon, in North Somerset, and included a visit to the Cheddar Caves.
Tolkein's determined courtship of Edith inspired the Beren and Luthien love story at the heart of the novel The Silmarillion. Once, while Tolkien was based at Hull during the First World War, Edith and he were able to spend time together. She danced for him in the woods and this was the inspiration for his tale of Beren and Luthien. He saw himself as Beren, and Edith as Luthien.
They had four children, three sons and a girl: John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla.
In 1920, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote letters to his children as Father Christmas, along with illustrations of his home near the North Pole, and planted it in the youngster's bedroom. He wrote them every year until his youngest was 14 years old in 1943, and with each passing year, his stories became more elaborate and character-filled.
When he enlisted in the army, J. R. R. Tolkien's son Michael put down his father's profession as 'Wizard'.
Tolkein became a close friend of C. S. Lewis. His wisdom pointed Lewis back to Christianity. The two were founding members of one of history's most famous literary groups: the Inklings.
Tolkien was a practical joker. He was known to dress up as an axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon warrior and chase his neighbor down the street.
In later life, Tolkien enjoyed handing shop assistants his false teeth among a handful of change.
Tolkien preferred bicycles over cars and hated the industrialization of Europe. It seems that the idyllic Shire is modeled after his simple life of the English countryside.
Ian McKellen based Gandalf's accent in the Lord of the Rings movie version off J.R.R. Tolkien's.
DEATH
Tolkien passed away on September 2, 1973. He died of a broken heart, according to grandson Simon. Mired in melancholy, his life ended 21 months after the death of Edith, his wife of 55 years.
His remains can be found at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. Tolkien's grave is signposted from the entrance.
Having had 'Lúthien' engraved on Edith's tombstone, when Tolkien died less than two years later he arranged for 'Beren' to be added under his own name, posthumous confirmation that these star-crossed lovers from The Silmarillion were inspired by the couple's own romance. He chose Lúthien being the most beautiful being in all Arda and Beren the man she forsook her immortality for.
In 2010, JRR Tolkien came third on the Forbes list of Top-Earning Dead Celebrities, surpassed only by Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.
The International Astronomical Union names all mountains on Saturn's moon Titan after locations and characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's works.
RELATIONSHIPS
Orphaned at 16, John Tolkien went to live in a Birmingham boarding house, where he fell in love with a female lodger, Edith Mary Bratt. She was three years his senior, a good pianist, and looked like an elf.
J.R.R. courted Edith. It was a forbidden love, as he was a Catholic and she a Protestant. His guardian, Father Francis ordered him to not have any contact until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed, but remained steadfast and five years later he declared his love to Edith. She left the man to whom she was currently engaged to marry him.
They married on March 22, 1916 in the Catholic Church of St. Mary Immaculate at Warwick.
Their week-long honeymoon was spent at Clevedon, in North Somerset, and included a visit to the Cheddar Caves.
Tolkein's determined courtship of Edith inspired the Beren and Luthien love story at the heart of the novel The Silmarillion. Once, while Tolkien was based at Hull during the First World War, Edith and he were able to spend time together. She danced for him in the woods and this was the inspiration for his tale of Beren and Luthien. He saw himself as Beren, and Edith as Luthien.
They had four children, three sons and a girl: John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla.
In 1920, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote letters to his children as Father Christmas, along with illustrations of his home near the North Pole, and planted it in the youngster's bedroom. He wrote them every year until his youngest was 14 years old in 1943, and with each passing year, his stories became more elaborate and character-filled.
When he enlisted in the army, J. R. R. Tolkien's son Michael put down his father's profession as 'Wizard'.
Tolkein became a close friend of C. S. Lewis. His wisdom pointed Lewis back to Christianity. The two were founding members of one of history's most famous literary groups: the Inklings.
FUN TOLKIEN FACTS
Tolkien was a practical joker. He was known to dress up as an axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon warrior and chase his neighbor down the street.
In later life, Tolkien enjoyed handing shop assistants his false teeth among a handful of change.
Tolkien preferred bicycles over cars and hated the industrialization of Europe. It seems that the idyllic Shire is modeled after his simple life of the English countryside.
Ian McKellen based Gandalf's accent in the Lord of the Rings movie version off J.R.R. Tolkien's.
DEATH
Tolkien passed away on September 2, 1973. He died of a broken heart, according to grandson Simon. Mired in melancholy, his life ended 21 months after the death of Edith, his wife of 55 years.
His remains can be found at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. Tolkien's grave is signposted from the entrance.
Having had 'Lúthien' engraved on Edith's tombstone, when Tolkien died less than two years later he arranged for 'Beren' to be added under his own name, posthumous confirmation that these star-crossed lovers from The Silmarillion were inspired by the couple's own romance. He chose Lúthien being the most beautiful being in all Arda and Beren the man she forsook her immortality for.
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| By Twooars - Photograph taken at the Wolvercote Cemetery, |
In 2010, JRR Tolkien came third on the Forbes list of Top-Earning Dead Celebrities, surpassed only by Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.
Tolkien was nominated in 2017 for beautification to be canonized as a Catholic saint.
Sources Daily Mail, Daily Express, Geeksugar, Christianity
Sources Daily Mail, Daily Express, Geeksugar, Christianity
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