J. R. R. TolkienEssay Preview: J. R. R. TolkienReport this essayJohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) is best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and of English language and literature, also at Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was a strongly committed Roman Catholic. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, with whom he shared membership in the literary discussion group the Inklings.
In addition to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkiens published fiction includes The Silmarillion and other posthumously published books about what he called a legendarium, a fictional mythology of the remote past of Earth, called Arda, and Middle-earth (from middangeard, the lands inhabitable by Men) in particular. Most of these works were compiled from Tolkiens notes by his son Christopher Tolkien. The enduring popularity and influence of Tolkiens works have established him as the “father of the modern high fantasy genre”.[citation needed] Tolkiens other published fiction includes adaptations of stories originally told to his children and not directly related to the legendarium.
BiographyThe Tolkien familyAs far as is known, most of Tolkiens paternal ancestors were craftsmen. The Tolkien family had its roots in Saxony (Germany), but had been living in England since the eighteenth century, becoming “quickly and intensely English (not British)”. [1] The surname Tolkien is Anglicized from Tollkiehn (i.e. German tollkÑŒhn, “foolhardy”, the etymological English translation would be dull-keen, a literal translation of oxymoron). The surname Rashbold of two characters in The Notion Club Papers is a pun on this.[2]
ChildhoodTolkien was born on January 3, 1892, in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State), South Africa, to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857-1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, nйe Suffield (1870-1904). Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel, who was born on February 17, 1894.[3]
While living in Africa he was bitten by a large tarantula in the garden, an event which would have later parallels in his stories.[4] When he was three, Tolkien 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.[5] This left the family without an income, so Tolkiens mother took him to live with her parents in Birmingham, England. Soon after in 1896, they moved to Sarehole (now in Hall Green), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham.[6] He enjoyed exploring Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog and the Clent Hills and Lickey Hills, which would later inspire scenes in his books along with other Worcestershire towns and villages such as Bromsgrove, Alcester and Alvechurch and places such as his aunts farm of Bag End, the name of which would be used in his fiction.[7]
Ronald and Hilary Tolkien in 1905 (from Carpenters Biography)Mabel tutored her two sons, and Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil.[8] She taught him a great deal of botany, and she awakened in her son 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 very early.[9] He could read by the age of four, and could write fluently soon afterwards. He attended King Edwards School, Birmingham and, while a student there, helped “line the route” for the coronation parade of King George V, being posted just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.[10] He later attended St. Philips School and Exeter College, Oxford.
His mother converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900 despite vehement protests by her Baptist family.[11] She died of complications due to diabetes in 1904, when Tolkien was twelve, at Fern Cottage, Rednal, which they were then renting. For the rest of his life, Tolkien felt that she had become a martyr for her faith; this had a profound effect on his own Catholic beliefs.[12] Tolkiens devout faith was significant in the conversion of C. S. Lewis to Christianity, though Tolkien was greatly disappointed that Lewis chose to follow Anglicanism.[13]
During his subsequent orphanhood he was brought up by Father Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham. He lived there in the shadow of Perrotts Folly and the Victorian tower of Edgbaston waterworks, which may have influenced the images of the dark towers within his works. Another strong influence was the romantic medievalist paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a large and world-renowned collection of works and had put it on free public display from around 1908.
YouthTolkien met and fell in love with Edith Mary Bratt, three years his senior, at the age of sixteen. Father Francis forbade him from meeting, talking, or even corresponding with her until he was twenty-one. He obeyed this prohibition to the letter.[14]
In 1911, while they were at King Edwards School, Birmingham, Tolkien and three friends, Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Smith and Christopher Wiseman, formed a semi-secret society which they called “the T.C.B.S.”, the initials standing for “Tea Club and Barrovian Society”, alluding to their fondness of drinking tea in Barrows Stores near the school and, illicitly, in the school library.[15] After leaving school, the members stayed in touch, and in December 1914, they held a “Council” in London, at Wisemans home. For Tolkien, the result of this meeting was a strong dedication to writing poetry.
In the summer of 1911, Tolkien went on holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollects vividly in a 1968 letter,[16] noting that Bilbos journey across the Misty Mountains (“including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods”) is directly based on his adventures as their party of twelve hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, and on to camp in the moraines beyond MÑŒrren. Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembers his regret at leaving the view of the eternal snows of Jungfrau and Silberhorn (“the Silvertine (Celebdil) of my dreams”). They went across the Kleine Scheidegg on to Grindelwald and across the Grosse Scheidegg to Meiringen. They continued across the Grimsel Pass
to the Black Citadel, and finally into the Great Eiffel tower. The last two nights of winter (winter and spring) and the start of the next day are known as the summer’s ‘Summer at Sea'(?)
They spent an evening on a road leading south into the woods. The winter was an entirely different one. In the summer, their winter days were more than usual cloudy to be honest. (It was late in September or October) and their winter nights, although filled with mild and pleasant weather, had little to do with being there during a winter. They went round the Grosse Scheidegg and beyond (the Grosse Scheidegg on the way to Nørmar) & then stopped in a large village, near a village on the other side of the Grosse Scheidegg and into a narrow field. I’ve never seen anyone so far out walking on the fields of a gryphon-shaped lake without a horse, so it’s not unusual for a young man to drive past a couple of us to a small village on the other side of the Grosse Scheidegg. (See http://www.f.gov/fra/epp/trending/trends/vendorreff/2012/10/fra-2017081530.htm) “In the summer,” said a young woman with a long-haired man next to her, “we went to Grosse Scheidegg twice a week, in the Winter and the Summer, during every month we went. (It was the one summer, of course, when we went to the Grosse Scheidegg.”) The children looked upon us with a great happiness. There was no snow or ice, they say, but the lake was full of snow. We were well on our way to the lake and had spent time with other young people about the lake, so my memory of the year is accurate to my knowledge. We used to go up into the sky, not so much snow as anything other than ice. It was so cold there, my dear child says, so thick that our sled could not even stand in it. (You can see this when you go and look around the lake, where we are sitting. It’s a deep hole, and the snow is cold.) “There were two children with their mothers inside. We brought them up on the road into the middle of the lake, and when they turned up, we said ‘Come on, stay there for us, we have got enough snow and you won’t have any food.’ ” The snow, on its