John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and
philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...
. He was the author of the
high fantasy
High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot.Brian Stableford, ''The A to Z of Fantasy Literature'', (p. 198), Scarecrow Press, ...
works ''
The Hobbit
''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...
'' and ''
The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's bo ...
''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the
Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon
The Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, until 1916 known as the Rawlinsonian Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, was established by Richard Rawlinson of St John's College, Oxford, in 1795. The Chair is associated with Pembroke Colleg ...
and a
Fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
of
Pembroke College, both at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
. He then moved within the same university to become the
Merton Professor of English Language and Literature
There are two Merton Professorships of English in the University of Oxford: the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, and the Merton Professor of English Literature. The second was created in 1914 when Sir Walter Raleigh's chair was ...
and Fellow of
Merton College
Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the 1260s when Walter de Merton, ...
, and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univer ...
, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group
The Inklings
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who pra ...
. He was appointed a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...
by Queen
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
on 28 March 1972.
After Tolkien's death, his son
Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including ''
The Silmarillion
''The Silmarillion'' () is a collection of myths and stories in varying styles by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. It was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, assisted by the fantasy author Guy Gavri ...
''. These, together with ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'', form a connected body of tales,
poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
, fictional histories,
invented languages
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...
, and literary essays about a fantasy world called
Arda and, within it,
Middle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...
. Between 1951 and 1955, Tolkien applied the term ''
legendarium
Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his ''The Lord of the Rings'', and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of ''The Silmaril ...
'' to the larger part of these writings.
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' led directly to
a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused him to be popularly identified as the "father" of
modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of
high fantasy
High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot.Brian Stableford, ''The A to Z of Fantasy Literature'', (p. 198), Scarecrow Press, ...
.
Biography
Ancestry
Tolkien's immediate paternal ancestors were middle-class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
and
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
. The Tolkien family originated in the
East Prussian town of
Kreuzburg near
Königsberg
Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was name ...
, which had been founded during medieval
German eastward expansion, where his earliest-known paternal ancestor Michel Tolkien was born around 1620. Michel's son Christianus Tolkien (1663–1746) was a wealthy miller in Kreuzburg.
His son, Christian Tolkien (1706–1791), moved from Kreuzburg to nearby
Danzig, and his two sons Daniel Gottlieb Tolkien (1747–1813) and Johann (later known as John) Benjamin Tolkien (1752–1819) emigrated to London in the 1770s and became the ancestors of the English family; the younger brother was J. R. R. Tolkien's second great-grandfather. In 1792, John Benjamin Tolkien and William Gravell took over the Erdley Norton manufacture in London, which from then on sold clocks and watches under the name Gravell & Tolkien. Daniel Gottlieb obtained British citizenship in 1794, but John Benjamin apparently never became a British citizen. Other German relatives also joined the two brothers in London. Several people with the surname Tolkien or similar spelling, some of them members of the same family as J. R. R. Tolkien, live in northern Germany, but most of them are descendants of people who
evacuated East Prussia in 1945, at the end of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
.
According to Ryszard Derdziński, the Tolkien name is of
Low Prussian
Low Prussian (german: Niederpreußisch), sometimes known simply as Prussian (''Preußisch''), is a moribund dialect of East Low German that developed in East Prussia. Low Prussian was spoken in East and West Prussia and Danzig up to 1945. In D ...
origin and probably means "son/descendant of Tolk".
Tolkien mistakenly believed his surname derived from the German word , meaning "foolhardy", and jokingly inserted himself as a "cameo" into ''
The Notion Club Papers
''The Notion Club Papers'' is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written during 1945 and published posthumously in '' Sauron Defeated'', the 9th volume of ''The History of Middle-earth''. It is a time travel story, written while ''The Lord of ...
'' under the literally translated name Rashbold. However, Derdziński has demonstrated this to be a
false etymology
A false etymology (fake etymology, popular etymology, etymythology, pseudo-etymology, or par(a)etymology) is a popular but false belief about the origin or derivation of a specific word. It is sometimes called a folk etymology, but this is also a ...
. While J. R. R. Tolkien was aware of his family's German origin, his knowledge of the family's history was limited because he was "early isolated from the family of his prematurely deceased father".
Childhood
![Mabel Suffield Christmas Card](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Mabel_Suffield_Christmas_Card.jpg)
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in
Bloemfontein
Bloemfontein, ( ; , "fountain of flowers") also known as Bloem, is one of South Africa's three capital cities and the capital of the Free State province. It serves as the country's judicial capital, along with legislative capital Cape To ...
in the
Orange Free State
The Orange Free State ( nl, Oranje Vrijstaat; af, Oranje-Vrystaat;) was an independent Boer sovereign republic under British suzerainty in Southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, which ceased to exist after it was defeat ...
(later
annexed by the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
; now
Free State Province
The Free State, known as Orange Free State until the 28th of June 1995 when its name was changed, is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bloemfontein, which is also South Africa's judicial capital. Its historical origins lie in the Boer ...
in the Republic of South Africa), to
Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, ''née'' Suffield (1870–1904). The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother,
Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, who was born on 17 February 1894.
As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a large
baboon spider in the garden, an event some believe to have been later echoed in his stories, although he admitted no actual memory of the event and no special hatred of spiders as an adult. In an earlier incident from Tolkien's infancy, a young family servant took the baby to his homestead, returning him the next morning.
When he was three, he went to England with his mother and brother on what was intended to be a lengthy family visit. 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
Kings Heath (historically, and still occasionally King's Heath) is a suburb of south Birmingham, England, four miles south of the city centre. Historically in Worcestershire, it is the next suburb south from Moseley on the A435, Alcester road. ...
, Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to
Sarehole (now in
Hall Green
Hall Green is an area in southeast Birmingham, England, synonymous with the B28 postcode. It is also a council constituency, managed by its own district committee. Historically it lay within the county of Worcestershire.
Politics
Hall Green i ...
), then a
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...
village, later annexed to Birmingham. He enjoyed exploring
Sarehole Mill
Sarehole Mill is a Grade II listed water mill, in an area once called Sarehole, on the River Cole in Hall Green, Birmingham, England. It is now run as a museum by the Birmingham Museums Trust. It is known for its association with J. R. R. Tol ...
and
Moseley Bog
Moseley Bog and Joy's Wood Local Nature Reserve, formerly The Dell, is a Local Nature Reserve in the Moseley area of Birmingham, England, with an area of about 12 ha (29 acres).
History
There are burnt mounds on the banks of the Coldbath Brook, ...
and the
Clent
Clent is a village and civil parish in the Bromsgrove District of Worcestershire, England, southwest of Birmingham and close to the edge of the West Midlands conurbation. At the 2001 census it had a population of 2,600.
Parish history
The pari ...
,
Lickey and
Malvern Hills
The Malvern Hills are in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern. The highest summit aff ...
, which would later inspire scenes in his books, along with nearby towns and villages such as
Bromsgrove,
Alcester
Alcester () is a market town and civil parish of Roman origin at the junction of the River Alne and River Arrow in the Stratford-on-Avon District in Warwickshire, England, approximately west of Stratford-upon-Avon, and 7 miles south of Reddit ...
, and
Alvechurch
Alvechurch ( ) is a large village and civil parish in the Bromsgrove district in northeast Worcestershire, England, in the valley of the River Arrow. The Lickey Hills Country Park is 2.5 miles (4 km) to the northwest. It is south of Bir ...
and places such as his aunt Jane's farm Bag End, the name of which he used in his fiction.
![BirminghamOratoryDome](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/BirminghamOratoryDome.jpg)
Mabel Tolkien taught her two children at home. Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil. She taught him a great deal of
botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
and awakened in him the enjoyment of the look and feel of plants. Young Tolkien liked to draw landscapes and trees, but his favourite lessons were those concerning languages, and his mother taught him the rudiments of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
very early.
Tolkien could read by the age of four and could write fluently soon afterwards. His mother allowed him to read many books. He disliked ''
Treasure Island
''Treasure Island'' (originally titled ''The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys''Hammond, J. R. 1984. "Treasure Island." In ''A Robert Louis Stevenson Companion'', Palgrave Macmillan Literary Companions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. .) is an adventure no ...
'' and "
The Pied Piper
The Pied Piper of Hamelin (german: der Rattenfänger von Hameln, also known as the Pan Piper or the Rat-Catcher of Hamelin) is the title character of a legend from the town of Hamelin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, Germany.
The legend dates back t ...
" and thought ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creature ...
'' by
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...
was "amusing but disturbing". He liked stories about
"Red Indians" (Native Americans) and works of fantasy by
George MacDonald
George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet and Christian Congregational church, Congregational Minister (Christianity), minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of modern fantasy literature a ...
. In addition, the "Fairy Books" of
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University o ...
were particularly important to him and their influence is apparent in some of his later writings.
![KES Free Grammar School Charles Barry](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/KES_Free_Grammar_School_Charles_Barry.jpg)
Mabel Tolkien was received into the
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
in 1900 despite vehement protests by her
Baptist
Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...
family,
which stopped all financial assistance to her. In 1904, when J. R. R. Tolkien was 12, his mother died of
acute diabetes at Fern Cottage in
Rednal
Rednal is a residential suburb on the south western edge of metropolitan Birmingham, West Midlands, England, southwest of Birmingham city centre and forming part of Longbridge parish and electoral ward.
Rednal is home to approximately 2,000 re ...
, which she was renting. She was then about 34 years of age, about as old as a person with
diabetes mellitus type 1
Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that originates when cells that make insulin (beta cells) are destroyed by the immune system. Insulin is a hormone required for the cells to use blood sugar for ...
could survive without treatment—
insulin would not be discovered until 1921, two decades later. 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."
Before her death, Mabel Tolkien had assigned the guardianship of her sons to her close friend, Father
Francis Xavier Morgan
Francis Xavier Morgan, C. O. (born Francisco Javier Morgan Osborne,J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. ed. Michael D. C. Drout. Nueva York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-4159-6942-0. 18 January 1857 – 11 June 1935) was ...
of the
Birmingham Oratory, who was assigned to bring them up as good Catholics. In a 1965 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled the influence of the man whom he always called "Father Francis": "He was an upper-class Welsh-Spaniard Tory, and seemed to some just a pottering old gossip. He was—and he was ''not''. I first learned charity and forgiveness from him; and in the light of it pierced even the 'liberal' darkness out of which I came, knowing more about '
Bloody Mary
Bloody Mary originally referred to:
* Mary I of England (1516–1558), Queen of England and Ireland, so called because of her persecution of Protestants
Bloody Mary may also refer to:
Film
* '' Urban Legends: Bloody Mary'', a 2005 horror fi ...
' than the
Mother of Jesus—who was never mentioned except as an object of wicked worship by the Romanists."
After his mother's death, Tolkien grew up in the
Edgbaston
Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre.
In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family a ...
area of Birmingham and attended
King Edward's School, Birmingham
King Edward's School (KES) is an independent day school for boys in the British public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Bir ...
, and later
St Philip's School. In 1903, he won a Foundation Scholarship and returned to King Edward's.
Youth
While in his early teens, Tolkien had his first encounter with a
constructed language
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction ...
, Animalic, an invention of his cousins, Mary and
Marjorie Incledon
Marjorie May Incledon (1891–1973) was a British artist, notable as a painter and stained glass artist.
Biography
Incledon was born in Bromsgrove and educated at Berkhamsted Grammar School. She was a first cousin''The Letters of J. R. R. Tolk ...
. At that time, he was studying Latin and Anglo-Saxon. Their interest in Animalic soon died away, but Mary and others, including Tolkien himself, invented a new and more complex language called Nevbosh. The next constructed language he came to work with, Naffarin, would be his own creation. Tolkien learned
Esperanto some time before 1909. Around 10 June 1909 he composed "The Book of the Foxrook", a sixteen-page notebook, where the "earliest example of one of his invented alphabets" appears. Short texts in this notebook are written in Esperanto.
In 1911, while they were at King Edward's School, Tolkien and three friends, Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith, and Christopher Wiseman, formed a semi-secret society they called the T.C.B.S. The initials stood for Tea Club and Barrovian Society, alluding to their fondness for drinking tea in
Barrow's Stores
Barrow's Stores, also known as Barrow's, was an upmarket department store located in Birmingham, England.
History
Barrow's Stores was originally started by Richard Cadbury, of the Cadbury family. Richard opened a small drapery store in 1794 ...
near the school and, secretly, in the school library. After leaving school, the members stayed in touch and, in December 1914, they held a council in London at Wiseman's home. For Tolkien, the result of this meeting was a strong dedication to writing poetry.
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
The geography of Middle-earth encompasses the physical, political, and moral geography of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, strictly a continent on the planet of Arda (Tolkien), Arda but widely taken to mean Arda (Middle-earth), t ...
("including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods") is directly based on his adventures as their party of 12 hiked from
Interlaken
Interlaken (; lit.: ''between lakes'') is a Swiss town and municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern. It is an important and well-known tourist destination in the Bernese Oberland region of the Swiss A ...
to
Lauterbrunnen
, neighboring_municipalities= Aeschi bei Spiez, Blatten (Lötschen) (VS), Fieschertal (VS), Grindelwald, Gündlischwand, Kandersteg, Lütschental, Reichenbach im Kandertal, Saxeten, Wilderswil
, twintowns =
}
Lauterbrunnen is a village ...
and on to camp in the
moraines beyond
Mürren
Mürren is a traditional Walser mountain village in the Bernese Highlands of Switzerland, at an elevation of above sea level and it cannot be reached by public road. It is also one of the popular tourist spots in Switzerland, and summer and w ...
. Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembered his regret at leaving the view of the eternal snows of
Jungfrau
The Jungfrau ( "maiden, virgin"), at is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with the Eiger and Mönch, the Ju ...
and
Silberhorn
The Silberhorn (3,695 m) is a pyramid-shaped mountain of the Bernese Alps, to the northwest of the Jungfrau of which it is a satellite peak.
A first attempt to reach the summit of the Silberhorn was made in June 1863 by M. v. Fellenberg from th ...
, "the Silvertine (
Celebdil) of my dreams". They went across the
Kleine Scheidegg
The Kleine Scheidegg ( en, Little Scheidegg) is a mountain pass at an elevation of , situated below and between the Eiger and Lauberhorn peaks in the Bernese Oberland region of Switzerland. The name means "minor watershed", as it only divides the ...
to
Grindelwald
, neighboring_municipalities = Brienz, Brienzwiler, Fieschertal (VS), Guttannen, Innertkirchen, Iseltwald, Lauterbrunnen, Lütschental, Meiringen, Schattenhalb
, twintowns = Azumi, now Matsumoto (Japan)
Grindelwald is a village and ...
and on across the
Grosse Scheidegg to
Meiringen
Meiringen () is a municipality in the Interlaken-Oberhasli administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. Besides the village of Meiringen, the municipality includes the settlements of Balm, Brünigen, Eisenbolgen, Hausen, Prasti, ...
. They continued across the
Grimsel Pass
The Grimsel Pass (german: Grimselpass; french: Col du Grimsel; it, Passo del Grimsel) is a mountain pass in Switzerland, crossing the Bernese Alps at an elevation of . The pass connects the Haslital, the upper valley of the river Aare, with the ...
, through the upper
Valais
Valais ( , , ; frp, Valês; german: Wallis ), more formally the Canton of Valais,; german: Kanton Wallis; in other official Swiss languages outside Valais: it, (Canton) Vallese ; rm, (Chantun) Vallais. is one of the 26 cantons forming the S ...
to
Brig and on to the
Aletsch glacier and
Zermatt
Zermatt () is a municipality in the district of Visp in the German-speaking section of the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It has a year-round population of about 5,800 and is classified as a town by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) ...
.
In October of the same year, Tolkien began studying at
Exeter College, Oxford
(Let Exeter Flourish)
, old_names = ''Stapeldon Hall''
, named_for = Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter
, established =
, sister_college = Emmanuel College, Cambridge
, rector = Sir Richard Trainor
...
. He initially read
classics but changed his course in 1913 to English language and
literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
, graduating in 1915 with
first-class honours
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...
.
Among his tutors at Oxford was
Joseph Wright Joseph Wright may refer to:
*Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797), English painter
*Joseph Wright (American painter) (1756–1793), American portraitist
*Joseph Wright (fl. 1837/1845), whose company, Messrs. Joseph Wright and Sons, became the Metro ...
, whose ''Primer of the Gothic Language'' had inspired Tolkien as a schoolboy.
Courtship and marriage
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 in Duchess Road,
Edgbaston
Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre.
In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family a ...
. According to Humphrey Carpenter, "Edith and Ronald took to frequenting Birmingham teashops, especially one which had a balcony overlooking the pavement. There they would sit and throw sugarlumps into the hats of passers-by, moving to the next table when the sugar bowl was empty. ... With two people of their personalities and in their position, romance was bound to flourish. 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
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
woman; Tolkien wrote that the combined tensions contributed to his having "muffed
isexams".
Morgan prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with Edith until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed this prohibition to the letter, with one notable early exception, over which Father Morgan threatened to cut short his university career if he did not stop.
On the evening of his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith, who was living with family friend C. H. Jessop at
Cheltenham. He declared that he had never ceased to love her, and asked her to marry him. Edith replied that she had already accepted the proposal of George Field, the brother of one of her closest school friends. But Edith said she had agreed to marry Field only because she felt "on the shelf" and had begun to doubt that Tolkien still cared for her. She explained that, because of Tolkien's letter, everything had changed.
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. Field was "dreadfully upset at first", and the Field family was "insulted and angry".
Upon learning of Edith's new plans, Jessop wrote to her guardian, "I have nothing to say against Tolkien, he is a cultured gentleman, but his prospects are poor in the extreme, and when he will be in a position to marry I cannot imagine. Had he adopted a profession it would have been different."
Following their engagement, Edith reluctantly announced that she was converting to Catholicism at Tolkien's insistence. Jessop, "like many others of his age and class ... strongly
anti-Catholic
Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the Uni ...
", was infuriated, and he ordered Edith to find other lodgings.
Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were formally engaged at Birmingham in January 1913, and married at
St Mary Immaculate Catholic Church at
Warwick
Warwick ( ) is a market town, civil parish and the county town of Warwickshire in the Warwick District in England, adjacent to the River Avon. It is south of Coventry, and south-east of Birmingham. It is adjoined with Leamington Spa and Whi ...
, on 22 March 1916. In his 1941 letter to Michael, Tolkien expressed admiration for his wife's willingness to marry a man with no job, little money, and no prospects except the likelihood of being killed in the Great War.
First World War
In August 1914, Britain entered the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. Tolkien's relatives were shocked when he elected not to volunteer immediately for the
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
. In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled: "In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage."
Instead, Tolkien, "endured the
obloquy",
and entered a programme by which he delayed enlistment until completing his degree. By the time he passed his finals in July 1915, Tolkien recalled that the hints were "becoming outspoken from relatives".
He was commissioned as a temporary
second lieutenant in the
Lancashire Fusiliers
The Lancashire Fusiliers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army that saw distinguished service through many years and wars, including the Second Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, and had many different titles throughout its 28 ...
on 15 July 1915.
He trained with the 13th (Reserve) Battalion on
Cannock Chase
Cannock Chase (), often referred to locally as The Chase, is a mixed area of countryside in the county of Staffordshire, England. The area has been designated as the Cannock Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is managed by Forestry E ...
, Rugeley Camp near to
Rugeley
Rugeley ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Cannock Chase District in Staffordshire, England. It lies on the north-eastern edge of Cannock Chase next to the River Trent; it is situated north of Lichfield, south-east of Stafford, nort ...
,
Staffordshire, for 11 months. In a letter to Edith, Tolkien complained: "Gentlemen are rare among the superiors, and even human beings rare indeed." Following their wedding, Lieutenant and Mrs. Tolkien took up lodgings near the training camp.
On 2 June 1916, Tolkien received a telegram summoning him to
Folkestone for posting to France. The Tolkiens spent the night before his departure in a room at the Plough & Harrow Hotel in
Edgbaston
Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre.
In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family a ...
, Birmingham.
He later wrote: "Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then... it was like a death."
France
On 5 June 1916, Tolkien boarded a troop transport for an overnight voyage to
Calais. Like other soldiers arriving for the first time, he was sent to the
British Expeditionary Force's (BEF) base depot at
Étaples
Étaples or Étaples-sur-Mer (; vls, Stapel, lang; pcd, Étape) is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It is a fishing and leisure port on the Canche river.
History
Étaples takes its name from having been a medieval ...
. On 7 June, he was informed that he had been assigned as a signals officer to the 11th (Service) Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers. The battalion was part of the
74th Brigade,
25th Division. While waiting to be summoned to his unit, Tolkien sank into boredom. To pass the time, he composed a poem entitled ''The Lonely Isle'', which was inspired by his feelings during the sea crossing to Calais. To evade the British Army's
postal censorship
Postal censorship is the inspection or examination of mail, most often by governments. It can include opening, reading and total or selective obliteration of letters and their contents, as well as covers, postcards, parcels and other postal pa ...
, he developed a code of dots by which Edith could track his movements.
He left Étaples on 27 June 1916 and joined his battalion at
Rubempré, near
Amiens
Amiens (English: or ; ; pcd, Anmien, or ) is a city and commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in the region of Hauts-de-France. In 2021, the population of ...
. He found himself commanding enlisted men who were drawn mainly from the mining, milling, and weaving towns of Lancashire. According to
John Garth, he "felt an affinity for these working class men", but military protocol prohibited friendships with "
other ranks". Instead, he was required to "take charge of them, discipline them, train them, and probably censor their letters ... If possible, he was supposed to inspire their love and loyalty."
Tolkien later lamented, "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."
Battle of the Somme
![Schwaben Redoubt by William Orpen IWM Art](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Schwaben_Redoubt_by_William_Orpen_IWM_Art.IWM_ART_3000.jpg)
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
The Capture of Schwaben Redoubt () was a tactical incident in the Battle of the Somme, 1916 during the First World War. The redoubt was a German strong point long and wide, built in stages since 1915, near the village of Thiepval and overlook ...
and the
Leipzig salient
The Leipzig Salient was the British term for a German defensive position built in 1915 on the Somme in France, during the First World War, opposite the village of Authuille which contained the Leipzig Redoubt on its west face. The position was ...
. Tolkien's time in combat was a terrible stress for Edith, who feared that every knock on the door might carry news of her husband's death. Edith could track her husband's movements on a map of the
Western Front. The Reverend Mervyn S. Evers,
Anglican chaplain to the Lancashire Fusiliers, recorded that Tolkien and his fellow officers were eaten by "hordes of lice" which found the Medical Officer's ointment merely "a kind of ''
hors d'oeuvre'' and the little beggars went at their feast with renewed vigour." On 27 October 1916, as his battalion attacked
Regina Trench, Tolkien contracted
trench fever
Trench fever (also known as "five-day fever", "quintan fever" ( la, febris quintana), and "urban trench fever") is a moderately serious disease transmitted by body lice. It infected armies in Flanders, France, Poland, Galicia, Italy, Salonika, Ma ...
, a disease carried by
lice. He was invalided to England on 8 November 1916. Many of his dearest school friends were killed in the war. Among their number were Rob Gilson of the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, who was killed on the
first day of the Somme while leading his men in the assault on
Beaumont Hamel. Fellow T.C.B.S. member Geoffrey Smith was killed during the battle, when a German artillery shell landed on a first-aid post. Tolkien's battalion was almost completely wiped out following his return to England.
![Lancashire Fusiliers trench Beaumont Hamel 1916](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Lancashire_Fusiliers_trench_Beaumont_Hamel_1916.jpg)
According to John Garth,
Kitchener's
army
An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...
at once marked existing social boundaries and counteracted the class system by throwing everyone into a desperate situation together. Tolkien was grateful, writing that it had taught him "a deep sympathy and feeling for the
Tommy
Tommy may refer to:
People
* Tommy (given name)
* Tommy Atkins, or just Tommy, a slang term for a common soldier in the British Army
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Tommy'' (1931 film), a Soviet drama film
* ''Tommy'' (1975 fil ...
; especially the plain soldier from the agricultural counties".
Home front
A weak and emaciated Tolkien spent the remainder of the war alternating between hospitals and garrison duties, being deemed medically unfit for general service. During his recovery in a cottage in
Little Haywood
Little Haywood is a village in Staffordshire, England. For population details as taken at the 2011 census see under Colwich. It lies beside a main arterial highway, the A51 (linking the English Midlands with Liverpool) but traffic through th ...
,
Staffordshire, he began to work on what he called ''
The Book of Lost Tales
''The Book of Lost Tales'' is a collection of early stories by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien, published as the first two volumes of Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume series '' The History of Middle-earth'', in which he presents and analys ...
'', beginning with ''
The Fall of Gondolin
J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Fall of Gondolin'' is one of the stories which formed the basis for a section in his posthumously-published work, '' The Silmarillion'', with a version later appearing in ''The Book of Lost Tales''. In the narrative, ...
''. ''Lost Tales'' represented Tolkien's attempt to create a mythology for England, a project he would abandon without ever completing. Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps. It was at this time that Edith bore their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. In a 1941 letter, Tolkien described his son John as "(conceived and carried during the starvation-year of 1917 and the great
U-Boat campaign
The U-boat Campaign from 1914 to 1918 was the World War I naval campaign fought by German U-boats against the trade routes of the Allies. It took place largely in the seas around the British Isles and in the Mediterranean.
The German Empir ...
) round about the
Battle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed as far off as it does now".
Tolkien was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 6 January 1918. When he was stationed at
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull, usually abbreviated to Hull, is a port city and unitary authority in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.
It lies upon the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber Estuary, inland from the North Sea and south-ea ...
, he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby
Roos, and Edith began to dance for him in a clearing among the flowering hemlock. After his wife's death in 1971, Tolkien remembered,
On 16 July 1919 Tolkien was taken off active service, at Fovant, on Salisbury Plain, with a temporary disability pension.
Academic and writing career
On 3 November 1920, Tolkien was demobilized and left the army, retaining his rank of lieutenant. His first civilian job after World War I was at the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
'', 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
A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to:
Computing and technology
* Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader
* Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application
* A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...
in English language at the
University of Leeds
, mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased
, established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds
, ...
, becoming the youngest member of the
academic staff
Academic personnel, also known as faculty member or member of the faculty (in North American usage) or academics or academic staff (in British, Australia, and New Zealand usage), are vague terms that describe teachers or research staff of a school ...
there.
While at Leeds, he produced ''A Middle English Vocabulary'' and a definitive edition of ''
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of ...
'' with
E. V. Gordon
Eric Valentine Gordon (14 February 1896 – 29 July 1938) was a Canadian philologist, known as an editor of medieval Germanic texts and a teacher of medieval Germanic languages at the University of Leeds and the University of Manchester.
Early ...
; both became academic standard works for several decades. He translated ''Sir Gawain'', ''
Pearl
A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pearl is composed of calcium carb ...
'', and ''
Sir Orfeo
''Sir Orfeo'' is an anonymous Middle English Breton lai dating from the late 13th or early 14th century. It retells the story of Orpheus as a king who rescues his wife from the fairy king. The folk song ''Orfeo'' ( Roud 136, Child 19) is based ...
''. In 1925, he returned to Oxford as
Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon
The Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, until 1916 known as the Rawlinsonian Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, was established by Richard Rawlinson of St John's College, Oxford, in 1795. The Chair is associated with Pembroke Colleg ...
, with a fellowship at
Pembroke College.
In mid-1919, he began to tutor undergraduates privately, most importantly those of
Lady Margaret Hall and
St Hugh's College, given that the women's colleges were in great need of good teachers in their early years, and Tolkien as a married professor (then still not common) was considered suitable, as a bachelor don would not have been.
During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote ''
The Hobbit
''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...
'' and the first two volumes of ''The Lord of the Rings'', while living at 20
Northmoor Road in
North Oxford
North Oxford is a suburban part of the city of Oxford in England. It was owned for many centuries largely by St John's College, Oxford and many of the area's Victorian houses were initially sold on leasehold by the College.
Overview
The le ...
. He also published a philological essay in 1932 on the name "
Nodens
*''Nodens'' or *''Nodons'' ( reconstructed from the dative ''Nodenti'' or ''Nodonti'') is a Celtic healing god worshipped in Ancient Britain. Although no physical depiction of him has survived, votive plaques found in a shrine at Lydney Park ...
", following Sir
Mortimer Wheeler
Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH CIE MC TD (10 September 1890 – 22 July 1976) was a British archaeologist and officer in the British Army. Over the course of his career, he served as Director of both the National Museum of Wales an ...
's unearthing of a
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...
Asclepeion at
Lydney Park
Lydney Park is a 17th-century country estate surrounding Lydney House, located at Lydney in the Forest of Dean district in Gloucestershire, England. It is known for its gardens and Roman temple complex.
House and gardens
Lydney Park wa ...
, Gloucestershire, in 1928.
''Beowulf''
In the 1920s, Tolkien undertook a translation of ''
Beowulf'', which he finished in 1926, but did not publish. It was finally edited by his son and published in 2014, more than 40 years after Tolkien's death and almost 90 years after its completion.
Ten years after finishing his translation, Tolkien gave a highly acclaimed lecture on the work, "
''Beowulf'': The Monsters and the Critics", which had a lasting influence on ''Beowulf'' research. Lewis E. Nicholson said that the article is "widely recognized as a turning point in Beowulfian criticism", noting that Tolkien established the primacy of the poetic nature of the work as opposed to its purely linguistic elements. At the time, the consensus of scholarship deprecated ''Beowulf'' for dealing with childish battles with monsters rather than realistic tribal warfare; Tolkien argued that the author of ''Beowulf'' was addressing human destiny in general, not as limited by particular tribal politics, and therefore the monsters were essential to the poem. Where ''Beowulf'' does deal with specific tribal struggles, as at
Finnsburg, Tolkien argued firmly against reading in fantastic elements. In the essay, Tolkien also revealed how highly he regarded ''Beowulf'': "Beowulf is among my most valued sources";
this influence may be seen throughout his
Middle-earth
Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...
legendarium
Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his ''The Lord of the Rings'', and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of ''The Silmaril ...
.
According to
Humphrey Carpenter
Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter (29 April 1946 – 4 January 2005) was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster. He is known especially for his biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien and other members of the literary society the Inkl ...
, Tolkien began his series of lectures on ''Beowulf'' in a most striking way, entering the room silently, fixing the audience with a look, and suddenly declaiming in Old English the opening lines of the poem, starting "with a great cry of ''
Hwæt!''" It was a dramatic impersonation of an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it made the students realize that ''Beowulf'' was not just a set text but "a powerful piece of dramatic poetry".
Decades later,
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
wrote to his former professor, thanking him for the "unforgettable experience" of hearing him recite ''Beowulf'', and stating "The voice was the voice of
Gandalf
Gandalf is a protagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels '' The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. He is a wizard, one of the ''Istari'' order, and the leader of the Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien took the name "Gandalf" from the Old Nor ...
".
Second World War
![UK-2014-Oxford-Merton College 05](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/UK-2014-Oxford-Merton_College_05.JPG)
In the run-up to the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, Tolkien was earmarked as a
codebreaker. In January 1939, he was asked to serve in the
cryptographic department of the Foreign Office in the event of national emergency. Beginning on 27 March, he took an instructional course at the London HQ of the
Government Code and Cypher School
Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...
. He was informed in October that his services would not be required.
In 1945, Tolkien moved to
Merton College, Oxford, becoming the
Merton Professor of English Language and Literature
There are two Merton Professorships of English in the University of Oxford: the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, and the Merton Professor of English Literature. The second was created in 1914 when Sir Walter Raleigh's chair was ...
,
in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959. He served as an external examiner for
University College, Galway
The University of Galway ( ga, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe) is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland. A tertiary education and research institution, the university was awarded the full five QS stars for excellence in 201 ...
(now NUI Galway), for many years. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from the
National University of Ireland (of which University College, Galway, was a constituent college). Tolkien completed ''The Lord of the Rings'' in 1948, close to a decade after the first sketches.
Family
The Tolkiens had four children:
John Francis Reuel Tolkien (17 November 1917 – 22 January 2003), Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien (22 October 1920 – 27 February 1984),
Christopher John Reuel Tolkien
Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (21 November 1924 – 16 January 2020) was an English academic editor, becoming a French citizen in later life. The son of author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien edited much of his father ...
(21 November 1924 – 16 January 2020) and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien (18 June 1929 – 28 February 2022). Tolkien was very devoted to his children and sent them illustrated
letters from Father Christmas when they were young.
Retirement
![Oxford Tolkien](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Oxford_Tolkien.JPG)
During his life in retirement, from 1959 up to his death in 1973, Tolkien received steadily increasing public attention and literary fame. In 1961, his friend
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univer ...
even nominated him for the
Nobel Prize in Literature. The sales of his books were so profitable that he regretted that he had not chosen early retirement.
In a 1972 letter, he deplored having become a
cult-figure, but admitted that "even the nose of a very modest idol ... cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!"
Fan attention became so intense that Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory,
and eventually he and Edith moved to
Bournemouth, which was then a seaside resort patronized by the British upper middle class. Tolkien's status as a best-selling author gave them easy entry into polite society, but Tolkien deeply missed the company of his fellow
Inklings
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who pr ...
. Edith, however, was overjoyed to step into the role of a society hostess, which had been the reason that Tolkien selected Bournemouth in the first place. The genuine and deep affection between Ronald and Edith was demonstrated by their care about the other's health, in details like wrapping presents, in the generous way he gave up his life at Oxford so she could retire to Bournemouth, and in her pride in his becoming a famous author. They were tied together, too, by love for their children and grandchildren.
In his retirement Tolkien was a consultant and translator for ''
The Jerusalem Bible
''The Jerusalem Bible'' (JB or TJB) is an English translation of the Bible published in 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd. As a Catholic Bible, it includes 73 books: the 39 books shared with the Hebrew Bible, along with the seven deuterocanonical ...
'', published in 1966. He was initially assigned a larger portion to translate, but, due to other commitments, only managed to offer some criticisms of other contributors and a translation of the
Book of Jonah
The Book of Jonah is collected as one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im ("Prophets") in the Hebrew Bible, and as a book in its own right in the Christian Old Testament. The book tells of a Hebrew prophet named Jonah, son of Amittai, wh ...
.
Final years
![Tolkien's grave, Wolvercote Cemetery](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Tolkien%27s_grave%2C_Wolvercote_Cemetery.jpg)
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.
Tolkien was made a Commander of the
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
in the
1972 New Year Honours and received the insignia of the Order at
Buckingham Palace on 28 March 1972.
In the same year Oxford University gave him an honorary
Doctorate of Letters
Doctor of Letters (D.Litt., Litt.D., Latin: ' or ') is a terminal degree in the humanities that, depending on the country, is a higher doctorate after the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree or equivalent to a higher doctorate, such as the Doctor ...
.
He had the name
Luthien engraved on Edith's tombstone at
Wolvercote Cemetery
Wolvercote Cemetery is a cemetery in the parish of Wolvercote and district of Cutteslowe in Oxford, England. Its main entrance is on Banbury Road and it has a side entrance in Five Mile Drive. It has a funeral chapel, public toilets and a small a ...
,
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
. When Tolkien died 21 months later on 2 September 1973 from a bleeding ulcer and chest infection, at the age of 81,
he was buried in the same grave, with "
Beren" added to his name. Tolkien's will was proven on 20 December 1973, with his estate valued at £190,577 (equivalent to £ in ).
Views
Religion
Tolkien's
Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
was a significant factor in
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univer ...
's conversion from
atheism to Christianity, although Tolkien was dismayed that Lewis chose to join the
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
.
[ Lewis was brought up in the ]Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the secon ...
. He once wrote to
Rayner Unwin
Rayner Stephens Unwin CBE (23 December 1925 – 23 November 2000) was an English publisher. He served as the chairman of the publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, which had been founded by his father Sir Stanley Unwin.
Early life
Unwin was bo ...
's daughter Camilla, who wished to know the purpose of life, that it was "to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks." He had a special devotion to the
blessed sacrament
The Blessed Sacrament, also Most Blessed Sacrament, is a devotional name to refer to the body and blood of Christ in the form of consecrated sacramental bread and wine at a celebration of the Eucharist. The term is used in the Latin Church of the ...
, writing to his son Michael that in "the Blessed Sacrament ... you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that".
He accordingly encouraged frequent reception of Holy Communion, again writing to his son Michael that "the only cure for sagging of fainting faith is Communion." He believed the Catholic Church to be true most of all because of the pride of place and the honour in which it holds the Blessed Sacrament.
In the last years of his life, Tolkien
resisted the liturgical changes implemented after the
Second Vatican Council
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the , or , was the 21st ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. The council met in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome for four periods (or sessions), each lasting between 8 and ...
, especially the use of English for the liturgy; he continued to make the responses in Latin, loudly, ignoring the rest of the congregation.
Race
Tolkien's fantasy writings have often been accused of embodying outmoded attitudes to race.
However, scholars have noted that he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, and that he was anti-
racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars. With the late 19th century background of
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
and a fear of moral decline, some critics saw the mention of
race mixing
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
in ''The Lord of the Rings'' as embodying
scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
.
Other commentators saw in Tolkien's
orc
An Orc (or Ork) is a fictional humanoid monster like a goblin. Orcs were brought into modern usage by the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially '' The Lord of the Rings''. In Tolkien's works, Orcs are a brutish, aggressive, ugl ...
s a reflection of wartime
propaganda caricatures of the Japanese.
Critics have noted, too, that the work embodies a
moral geography, with good in the West, evil in the East.
Against this, scholars have noted that Tolkien was outraged in peacetime by
Nazi racial theory, while during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
he was equally disgusted by
anti-German racial propaganda.
Other scholars have stated that Tolkien's Middle-earth is definitely polycultural and polylingual, and that attacks on Tolkien based on ''The Lord of the Rings'' often omit relevant evidence from the text.
Nature
During most of his own life
conservationism was not yet on the political agenda, and Tolkien himself did not directly express conservationist views—except in some private letters, in which he tells about his fondness for forests and sadness at tree-felling. In later years, a number of authors of biographies or literary analyses of Tolkien conclude that during his writing of ''The Lord of the Rings'', Tolkien gained increased interest in the value of wild and untamed nature, and in protecting what wild nature was left in the industrialized world.
Writing
Influences
Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Silmarillion'', drew on a wide array of influences including his
philological
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as t ...
interest in language,
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
,
mythology
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narra ...
,
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
, ancient and modern literature, and personal experience. His philological work centred on the study of
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
literature, especially ''
Beowulf'', and he acknowledged its importance to his writings. He was a gifted linguist, influenced by Germanic, Celtic,
Finnish, and Greek
language and mythology. Commentators have attempted to identify many literary and topological antecedents for characters, places and events in Tolkien's writings. Some writers were important to him, including the
Arts and Crafts polymath
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
, and he undoubtedly made use of some real place-names, such as Bag End, the name of his aunt's home.
[ Morton wrot]
an account of his findings
for the Tolkien Library. He acknowledged, too,
John Buchan and
H. Rider Haggard, authors of modern adventure stories that he enjoyed. The effects of some specific experiences have been identified. Tolkien's childhood in the English countryside, and its urbanization by the growth of
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
, influenced his creation of
the Shire
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in ''The Lord of the Rings'' and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in th ...
, while his personal experience of
fighting in the trenches of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
affected his depiction of
Mordor
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, Mordor (pronounced ; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is the realm and base of the evil Sauron. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, an ...
.
Publications
"''Beowulf'': The Monsters and the Critics"
In addition to writing fiction, Tolkien was an author of academic literary criticism. His seminal 1936 lecture, later published as an article, revolutionized the treatment of the Anglo-Saxon epic ''
Beowulf'' by literary critics. The essay remains highly influential in the study of Old English literature to this day.
''Beowulf'' is one of the
most significant influences upon Tolkien's later fiction, with major details of both ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' being adapted from the poem.
"On Fairy-Stories"
This essay discusses the fairy-story as a literary form. It was initially written as the 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Tolkien focuses on
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University o ...
's work as a folklorist and collector of fairy tales. He disagreed with Lang's broad inclusion, in his
Fairy Book collections, of traveller's tales, beast fables, and other types of stories. Tolkien held a narrower perspective, viewing fairy stories as those that took place in
Faerie
Fairyland (''Faerie'', Scottish ''Elfame'', c.f. Old Norse '' Álfheimr'') in English and Scottish folklore is the fabulous land or abode of fairies or ''fays''. Old French (Early Modern English ) referred to an illusion or enchantment, the land ...
, an enchanted realm, with or without fairies as characters. He viewed them as the natural development of the interaction of human imagination and human language.
Children's books and other short works
In addition to his
mythopoeic compositions, Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children. He wrote annual Christmas letters from
Father Christmas
Father Christmas is the traditional English name for the personification of Christmas. Although now known as a Christmas gift-bringer, and typically considered to be synonymous with Santa Claus, he was originally part of a much older and unrela ...
for them, building up a series of short stories (later compiled and published as ''
The Father Christmas Letters'').
Other works included ''
Mr. Bliss
''Mr. Bliss'' is a children's picture book by J. R. R. Tolkien, published posthumously in book form in 1982. One of Tolkien's least-known short works, it tells the story of Mr. Bliss and his first ride in his new motor-car. Many adventures ...
'' and ''
Roverandom
''Roverandom'' is a novella by J. R. R. Tolkien, originally told in 1925, about the adventures of a young dog, Rover. In the story, an irritable wizard turns Rover into a toy, and Rover goes to the Moon and under the sea in order to find the ...
'' (for children), and ''
Leaf by Niggle'' (part of ''
Tree and Leaf
''Tree and Leaf'' is a small book published in 1964, containing two works by J. R. R. Tolkien:
* a revised version of an essay called " On Fairy-Stories" (originally published in 1947 in ''Essays Presented to Charles Williams'')
* an allegoric ...
''), ''
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
''The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'' is a 1962 collection of poetry by J. R. R. Tolkien. The book contains 16 poems, two of which feature Tom Bombadil, a character encountered by Frodo Baggins in ''The Lord of the Rings''. The rest of the poems ar ...
'', ''
Smith of Wootton Major
''Smith of Wootton Major'', first published in 1967, is a novella by J. R. R. Tolkien.
Background
The book began as an attempt to explain the meaning of Faery by means of a story about a cook and his cake, and Tolkien originally thought to ca ...
'' and ''
Farmer Giles of Ham
''Farmer Giles of Ham'' is a comic medieval fable written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937 and published in 1949. The story describes the encounters between Farmer Giles and a wily dragon named Chrysophylax, and how Giles manages to use these to ...
''. ''Roverandom'' and ''Smith of Wootton Major'', like ''The Hobbit'', borrowed ideas from his legendarium.
''The Hobbit''
Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called ''
The Hobbit
''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...
'', which he had written some years before for his own children, came in 1936 to the attention of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the London publishing firm
George Allen & Unwin
George Allen & Unwin was a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It went on to become one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century and to establish an ...
, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for publication.
When it was published a year later, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and it became popular enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel.
''The Lord of the Rings''
The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what became his most famous work: the epic novel ''
The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's bo ...
'' (originally published in three volumes in 1954–1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for ''The Lord of the Rings'', during which time he received the constant support of the
Inklings
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who pr ...
, in particular his closest friend
C. S. Lewis, the author of ''
The Chronicles of Narnia
''The Chronicles of Narnia'' is a series of seven high fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, ''The Chronicles of Narnia'' has been adapted for radio, tele ...
''. Both ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' are set against the background of ''The Silmarillion'', but in a time long after it.
Tolkien at first intended ''The Lord of the Rings'' to be a children's tale in the style of ''The Hobbit'', but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to ''The Hobbit'', it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immense
backstory
A backstory, background story, back-story, or background is a set of events invented for a plot, presented as preceding and leading up to that plot. It is a literary device of a narrative history all chronologically earlier than the narrative o ...
of
Beleriand
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional legendarium, Beleriand was a region in northwestern Middle-earth during the First Age. Events in Beleriand are described chiefly in his work ''The Silmarillion'', which tells the story of the early ages of Middle ...
that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in ''The Silmarillion'' and other volumes.
Tolkien strongly influenced the
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...
genre that grew up after the book's success.
''The Lord of the Rings'' became immensely popular in the 1960s and has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the 20th century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "
Big Read
The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time. The year-long survey w ...
" survey conducted by the BBC, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was found to be the UK's "Best-loved Novel". Australians voted ''The Lord of the Rings'' "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the
Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...
customers, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002 Tolkien was voted the 92nd "
greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC, and in 2004 he was voted 35th in the
SABC3's Great South Africans
''Great South Africans'' was a South African television series that aired on SABC3 and hosted by Noeleen Maholwana Sangqu and Denis Beckett. In September 2004, thousands of South Africans took part in an informal nationwide poll to determine ...
, the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found ''The Lord of the Rings'' to be their favourite work of literature.
''The Silmarillion''
Tolkien wrote a brief "Sketch of the Mythology", which included the tales of Beren and Lúthien and of Túrin; and that sketch eventually evolved into the ''
Quenta Silmarillion
''The Silmarillion'' () is a collection of myths and stories in varying styles by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. It was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, assisted by the fantasy author Guy Gavrie ...
'', an epic history that Tolkien started three times but never published. Tolkien desperately hoped to publish it along with ''The Lord of the Rings'', but publishers (both
Allen & Unwin and
Collins) declined. Moreover, printing costs were very high in 1950s Britain, requiring ''The Lord of the Rings'' to be published in three volumes. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series ''
The History of Middle-earth
''The History of Middle-earth'' is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 that collect and analyse much of Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien. The series shows the development over ti ...
'', edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien. From around 1936, Tolkien began to extend this framework to include the tale of ''The Fall of
Númenor
Númenor, also called Elenna-nórë or Westernesse, is a fictional place in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings. It was the kingdom occupying a large island to the west of Middle-earth, the main setting of Tolkien's writings, and was the greatest civ ...
'', which was inspired by the legend of
Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and '' Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that b ...
.
Tolkien appointed his son Christopher to be his
literary executor
The literary estate of a deceased author consists mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works, including film, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially completed w ...
, and he (with assistance from
Guy Gavriel Kay
Guy Gavriel Kay (born November 7, 1954) is a Canadian writer of fantasy fiction. The majority of his novels take place in fictional settings that resemble real places during real historical periods, such as Constantinople during the reign of Jus ...
, later a well-known fantasy author in his own right) organized some of this material into a single coherent volume, published as ''
The Silmarillion
''The Silmarillion'' () is a collection of myths and stories in varying styles by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. It was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, assisted by the fantasy author Guy Gavri ...
'' in 1977. It received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel in 1978.
''Unfinished Tales'' and ''The History of Middle-earth''
In 1980, Christopher Tolkien published a collection of more fragmentary material, under the title ''
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth''. In subsequent years (1983–1996), he published a large amount of the remaining unpublished materials, together with notes and extensive commentary, in a series of twelve volumes called ''
The History of Middle-earth
''The History of Middle-earth'' is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 that collect and analyse much of Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien. The series shows the development over ti ...
''. They contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative, and outright contradictory accounts, since they were always a work in progress for Tolkien and he only rarely settled on a definitive version for any of the stories. There is not complete consistency between ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Hobbit'', the two most closely related works, because Tolkien never fully integrated all their traditions into each other. He commented in 1965, while editing ''The Hobbit'' for a third edition, that he would have preferred to rewrite the book completely because of the style of its prose.
Works compiled by Christopher Tolkien
Manuscript locations
Before his death, Tolkien negotiated the sale of the manuscripts, drafts, proofs and other materials related to his then-published works—including ''The Lord of the Rings'', ''The Hobbit'' and ''Farmer Giles of Ham''—to the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at
Marquette University
Marquette University () is a private Jesuit research university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Established by the Society of Jesus as Marquette College on August 28, 1881, it was founded by John Martin Henni, the first Bishop of the diocese of M ...
's John P. Raynor, S.J., Library in
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee ...
, Wisconsin. After his death his estate donated the papers containing Tolkien's ''Silmarillion'' mythology and his academic work to the
Bodleian Library at
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...
. The Bodleian Library held an exhibition of his work in 2018, including more than 60 items which had never been seen in public before.
In 2009, a partial draft of ''
Language and Human Nature
''Language and Human Nature'' is a joint literature project that was begun, but never completed, between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
In the 1940s, a news release from Lewis and Tolkien's publisher had announced that the book was to be publi ...
'', which Tolkien had begun co-writing with
C. S. Lewis but had never completed, was discovered at the Bodleian Library.
Languages and philology
Linguistic career
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
. He specialized in English philology at university and in 1915 graduated with
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...
as his special subject. He worked on the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
'' from 1918 and is credited with having worked on a number of words starting with the letter W, including ''
walrus
The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the fami ...
'', over which he struggled mightily. In 1920, he became Reader in English Language at the
University of Leeds
, mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased
, established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds
, ...
, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old English
heroic verse
Heroic verse is a term that may be used to designate epic poems, but which is more usually used to describe the meter(s) in which those poems are most typically written (regardless of whether the content is "heroic" or not). Because the meter typi ...
,
history of English
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Sa ...
, various
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
and
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory
Germanic philology,
Gothic,
Old Icelandic, and
Medieval Welsh. When in 1925, aged thirty-three, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at
Pembroke College, Oxford, he boasted that his students of Germanic philology in Leeds had even formed a "
Viking Club".
He also had a certain, if imperfect, knowledge of
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
.
Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things of
racial
A race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 1500s, when it was used to refer to groups of variou ...
and linguistic significance", and in his 1955 lecture ''
English and Welsh
"English and Welsh" is J. R. R. Tolkien's inaugural O'Donnell Memorial Lecture of 21 October 1955. The lecture sheds light on Tolkien's conceptions of the connections of race, ethnicity, and language.
Publication
It was first published in ''An ...
'', which is crucial to his understanding of race and language, he entertained notions of "inherent linguistic predilections", which he termed the "native language" as opposed to the "cradle-tongue" which a person first learns to speak. He considered the
West Midlands dialect of Middle English to be his own "native language", and, as he wrote to
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...
in 1955, "I am a West-midlander by blood (and took to early west-midland Middle English as a known tongue as soon as I set eyes on it)."
Language construction
![Quenya Example](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Quenya_Example.svg)
Parallel to Tolkien's professional work as a philologist, and sometimes overshadowing this work, to the effect that his academic output remained rather thin, was his affection for
constructing languages. The most developed of these are
Quenya and
Sindarin, the etymological connection between which formed the core of much of Tolkien's ''legendarium''. Language and grammar for Tolkien was a matter of
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
and
euphony
Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by during the mid-20th century and ...
, and Quenya in particular was designed from "phonaesthetic" considerations; it was intended as an "Elven-latin", and was phonologically based on Latin, with ingredients from Finnish, Welsh, English, and Greek.
An addition from late 1945 was
Adûnaic or
Númenórean, a language of a "faintly
Semitic flavour", connected with Tolkien's
Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and '' Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that b ...
legend, which by ''
The Notion Club Papers
''The Notion Club Papers'' is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written during 1945 and published posthumously in '' Sauron Defeated'', the 9th volume of ''The History of Middle-earth''. It is a time travel story, written while ''The Lord of ...
'' ties directly into his ideas about the inability of language to be inherited, and via the "
Second Age
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the history of Arda, also called the history of Middle-earth, began when the Ainur entered Arda, following the creation events in the Ainulindalë and long ages of labour throughout Eä, the fictional unive ...
" and the story of
Eärendil was grounded in the ''legendarium'', thereby providing a link of Tolkien's 20th-century "real primary world" with the legendary past of his Middle-earth.
Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view of
auxiliary languages: in 1930 a congress of Esperantists were told as much by him, in his lecture ''
A Secret Vice
''A Secret Vice'' is the title of a talk written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1931, given to a literary society entitled 'A Hobby for the Home', in which he first publicly revealed his interest in invented languages. Some twenty years later, Tolkien ...
'', "Your language construction will breed a mythology", but by 1956 he had concluded that "
Volapük
Volapük (; , "Language of the World", or lit. "World Speak") is a constructed language created between 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God had told him in a dream to create an ...
,
Esperanto,
Ido
Ido () is a constructed language derived from Reformed Esperanto, and similarly designed with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse backgrounds. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary language'', I ...
,
Novial
Novial is a constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language (IAL) for universal human communication between speakers of different native languages. It was devised by Otto Jespersen, a Denmark, Danish linguistics, linguist who ...
, &c, &c, are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends".
The popularity of Tolkien's books has had a small but lasting effect on the use of language in fantasy literature in particular, and even on mainstream dictionaries, which today commonly accept Tolkien's idiosyncratic spellings ''dwarves'' and ''dwarvish'' (alongside ''dwarfs'' and ''dwarfish''), which had been little used since the mid-19th century and earlier. (In fact, according to Tolkien, had the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
plural survived, it would have been ''dwarrows'' or ''dwerrows''.) He also coined the term ''
eucatastrophe
A eucatastrophe is a sudden turn of events in a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and very plausible and probable doom. The writer J. R. R. Tolkien coined the word by affixing the Greek prefix ''eu' ...
'', though it remains mainly used in connection with his own work.
Artwork
Tolkien learnt to paint and draw as a child, and continued to do so all his adult life. From early in his writing career, the development of his stories was accompanied by drawings and paintings, especially of landscapes, and by maps of the lands in which the tales were set. He also produced pictures to accompany the stories told to his own children, including those later published in ''Mr Bliss'' and ''Roverandom'', and sent them elaborately illustrated letters purporting to come from Father Christmas. Although he regarded himself as an amateur, the publisher used the author's own cover art,
his maps, and full-page illustrations for the early editions of ''The Hobbit''. He prepared maps and illustrations for ''The Lord of the Rings'', but the first edition contained only the maps, his
calligraphy for the inscription on the One Ring, and his ink drawing of the
Doors of Durin. Much of
his artwork was collected and published in 1995 as a book: ''
J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator''. The book discusses Tolkien's paintings, drawings, and sketches, and reproduces approximately 200 examples of his work.
Catherine McIlwaine curated a major exhibition of Tolkien's artwork at the
Bodleian Library, ''
Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth'', accompanied by a book of the same name that analyses Tolkien's achievement and illustrates the full range of the types of artwork that he created.
Legacy
Influence
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' led directly to
a popular resurgence and the shaping of the modern fantasy genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature
—or, more precisely, of high fantasy,
as in the work of authors such as
Ursula Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...
and her ''
Earthsea
''The Earthsea Cycle'', also known as ''Earthsea'', is a series of high fantasy books written by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Beginning with ''A Wizard of Earthsea'' (1968), '' The Tombs of Atuan'', (1970) and '' The Farthest Shore'' ...
'' series. In 2008, ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
His influence has extended to
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...
, including the Danish group
the Tolkien Ensemble's setting of all the
poetry in ''The Lord of the Rings'' to their vocal music; and to a broad range of
games set in Middle-earth.
Adaptations
In a 1951 letter to publisher Milton Waldman (1895–1976), Tolkien wrote about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "
e cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama".
The hands and minds of many artists have indeed been inspired by Tolkien's legends. Personally known to him were
Pauline Baynes
Pauline Diana Baynes (9 September 1922 – 1 August 2008) was an English illustrator, author and commercial artist. She contributed drawings and paintings to more than 200 books, mostly in the children's genre. She was the first illustrat ...
(Tolkien's favourite illustrator of ''
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
''The Adventures of Tom Bombadil'' is a 1962 collection of poetry by J. R. R. Tolkien. The book contains 16 poems, two of which feature Tom Bombadil, a character encountered by Frodo Baggins in ''The Lord of the Rings''. The rest of the poems ar ...
'' and ''
Farmer Giles of Ham
''Farmer Giles of Ham'' is a comic medieval fable written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937 and published in 1949. The story describes the encounters between Farmer Giles and a wily dragon named Chrysophylax, and how Giles manages to use these to ...
'') and
Donald Swann
Donald Ibrahim Swann (30 September 1923 – 23 March 1994) was a British composer, musician, singer and entertainer. He was one half of Flanders and Swann, writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders.
Life
Donald Swann was born ...
(who set the music to ''
The Road Goes Ever On''). Queen
Margrethe II of Denmark
Margrethe II (; Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid, born 16 April 1940) is Queen of Denmark. Having reigned as Denmark's monarch for over 50 years, she is Europe's longest-serving current head of state and the world's only incumbent femal ...
created illustrations to ''The Lord of the Rings'' in the early 1970s. She sent them to Tolkien, who was struck by the similarity they bore in style to his own drawings. Tolkien was not implacably opposed to the idea of a dramatic adaptation, however, and sold the film, stage and merchandise rights of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' to
United Artists
United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the stud ...
in 1968. United Artists never made a film, although director
John Boorman was planning a live-action film in the early 1970s. In 1976, the rights were sold to
Tolkien Enterprises
Middle-earth Enterprises, formerly known as Tolkien Enterprises, is a subdivision of the Embracer Freemode division of Embracer Group and formerly a trade name for a division of The Saul Zaentz Company. The subdivision owns the worldwide exclusiv ...
, a division of the
Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz (; February 28, 1921January 3, 2014) was an American film producer and record company executive. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and, in 1996, was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
Zaentz's film p ...
Company, and the first film adaptation of ''
The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's b ...
'' was released in 1978 as an animated
rotoscoping film directed by
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi (born October 29, 1938) is an American animator and filmmaker. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatric ...
with screenplay by the fantasy writer
Peter S. Beagle. It covered only the first half of the story of ''The Lord of the Rings''.
In 1977, an
animated
Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...
musical television film
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...
of ''
The Hobbit
''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...
'' was made by
Rankin-Bass
Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment (founded and formerly known as Videocraft International, Ltd. and Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.) was an American production company located in New York City, and known for its seasonal television specials, usual ...
, and in 1980, they produced the animated musical television film ''
The Return of the King
''The Return of the King'' is the third and final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings'', following '' The Fellowship of the Ring'' and '' The Two Towers''. It was published in 1955. The story begins in the kingdom of Gondor, ...
'', which covered some of the portions of ''The Lord of the Rings'' that Bakshi was unable to complete. From 2001 to 2003,
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema is an American film production studio owned by Warner Bros. Discovery and is a film label of Warner Bros. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye as an independent film distribution company; later becoming a film studio after ...
released ''
The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's b ...
'' as a trilogy of
live-action
Live action (or live-action) is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live-action with animation to create a live-action animated film. Live-action is used to define film, video ...
films that were filmed in New Zealand and directed by
Peter Jackson. The series was successful, performing extremely well commercially and winning numerous
Oscars
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
.
From 2012 to 2014,
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...
and New Line Cinema released ''
The Hobbit
''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...
'', a series of three films based on ''The Hobbit'', with
Peter Jackson serving as executive producer, director, and co-writer.
The first instalment, ''
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey'', was released in December 2012; the second, ''
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug'', in December 2013; and the last instalment, ''
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies'', in December 2014. In 2017,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
acquired the global television rights to ''
The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's bo ...
'', for a series of new stories set before ''The Fellowship of the Ring''.
Memorials
Tolkien and the characters and places from his works have become eponyms of many real-world objects. These include
geographical features on Titan (Saturn's largest moon),
street names such as There and Back Again Lane, inspired by ''The Hobbit'',
mountains such as Mount Shadowfax,
Mount Gandalf and
Mount Aragorn in Canada,
companies such as
Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies is a public American software company that specializes in big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The compa ...
,
and species including the wasp ''
Shireplitis tolkieni'',
37 new species of ''
Elachista'' moths,
and many fossils.
[Taxonomic summary]
Since 2003,
The Tolkien Society
The Tolkien Society is an educational charity and literary society devoted to the study and promotion of the life and works of the author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien.
It began informally in 1969, and held its inaugural meeting in 1970. It ho ...
has organized
Tolkien Reading Day, which takes place on 25 March in schools around the world. In 2013,
Pembroke College, Oxford University
Pembroke College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is located at Pembroke Square, Oxford. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale, and was named afte ...
, established an
annual lecture on fantasy literature in Tolkien's honour. In 2012, Tolkien was among the
British cultural icons selected by artist Sir
Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' ''
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admired. A 2019 biographical film, ''
Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works '' The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawl ...
'', focused on Tolkien's early life and war experiences. The Tolkien family and estate stated that they did not "approve of, authorise or participate in the making of" the film.
![Tolkien's Sarehole Mill blue plaque-persp](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Tolkien%27s_Sarehole_Mill_blue_plaque-persp.jpg)
Several
blue plaques in England commemorate places associated with Tolkien, including for his childhood, his workplaces, and places he visited.
Canonization process
On 2 September 2017, the
Oxford Oratory
The Oxford Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga (or Oxford Oratory for short) is the Catholic parish church for the centre of Oxford, England. It is located at 25 Woodstock Road, next to Somerville College. The church is served by the Congreg ...
, Tolkien's parish church during his time in Oxford, offered its first Mass for the intention of Tolkien's cause for
beatification
Beatification (from Latin ''beatus'', "blessed" and ''facere'', "to make”) is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their nam ...
to be opened.
A prayer was written for his cause.
Notes
References
Primary
Secondary
Sources
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Further reading
A small selection of books about Tolkien and his works:
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External links
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The Tolkien Estate WebsiteJournal of Inklings Studiespeer-reviewed journal on Tolkien and his literary circle, based at Oxford
HarperCollins Tolkien WebsiteBiography at the Tolkien SocietyArchival material at Leeds University LibraryTolkien: Maker of Middle-earthexhibition at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
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J. R. R. Tolkienat the
Encyclopedia of Fantasy
''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' is a 1997 reference work concerning fantasy fiction, edited by John Clute and John Grant. Other contributors include Mike Ashley, Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones, David Langford, Sam J. Lundwall, Michael Scot ...
J. R. R. Tolkienat the
Science Fiction Encyclopedia
''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (SFE) is an English language reference work on science fiction, first published in 1979. It has won the Hugo, Locus and British SF Awards. Two print editions appeared in 1979 and 1993. A third, continuo ...
Additional Resources for J. R. R. Tolkiencompiled by the
Marion E. Wade Center
The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College (Illinois) is a special research collection of papers, books, and manuscripts, primarily relating to seven authors from the United Kingdom: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. ...
BBC film (1968) featuring TolkienAudio recording of Tolkienfrom 1929 on a language learning gramophone disc
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Tolkien, J. R. R.
1892 births
1973 deaths
Burials in Oxfordshire
20th-century British short story writers
20th-century English novelists
20th-century English poets
20th-century philologists
20th-century translators
British expatriates in South Africa
Academics of the University of Leeds
Alumni of Exeter College, Oxford
Anglo-Saxon studies scholars
Arthurian scholars
British Army personnel of World War I
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Constructed language creators
Creators of writing systems
English children's writers
English fantasy writers
British academics of English literature
English male novelists
English male short story writers
English people of German descent
English philologists
English Roman Catholics
English short story writers
Fellows of Merton College, Oxford
Fellows of Pembroke College, Oxford
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Formalist poets
Inklings
Lancashire Fusiliers officers
Linguists from England
Merton Professors of English Language and Literature
Mythopoeic writers
People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham
People educated at St Philip's School
People from Bloemfontein
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Rawlinson and Bosworth Professors of Anglo-Saxon
Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
J.R.R.
Translators from Old English
Writers from Birmingham, West Midlands
Writers on Germanic paganism
Writers who illustrated their own writing
Writers from Oxford
Fantasy artists
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Burials at Wolvercote Cemetery