The life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (affectionately known as Ronald) was born on the 3rd January 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa to English parents Arthur Reuel Tolkien and Mabel Suffield. Although Ronald only lived in S.A. for approximately 3 years until the death of his father in 1896, it is thought that his time in the country, encountering creatures like massive spiders, has influenced his writing to some extent.
When Ronald, his sister, Hilary and mother returned to England they moved into a modest home that backed onto a railway line. It is said that this location sparked his linguistic imagination as he saw trains going past with destinations such as "Nantyglo", "Penrhiwceiber" and "Senghendd". In 1900 a significant event estranged Ronald's immediate family from the rest of their relatives and they were received by the Roman Catholic Church and visited regularly by the parish priest, Francis Morgan. Both Ronald and Hilary remained devout Catholics throughout their lives.
Ronald's mother died in 1904 from diabetes and he and Hilary were left orphaned. They spent a lot of time in the care of distant relatives and then in a boarding house run by a Mrs Faulkner.

From a very early age Ronald showed a natural talent for languages and quickly learned both Latin and Greek. He later also mastered both modern and ancient languages like Gothic and Finnish and even began to make up his own languages purely for fun.

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When Ronald was 16 years old he met a 19 year old girl, Edith Bratt; another resident of Mrs Faulkner's boarding house. The two became friends and their relationship deepened very quickly, something which caused Father Francis great concern that forced him to forbid Ronald from contact Edith until he was 21. To distract himself, Ronald buried himself in his learning; studying Classics at Oxford University before receiving a disappointing second class honours and switching to study English Literature and Language which he eventually achieved a first class honours degree in in June 1915. Following this achievement, Ronald enlisted in the army and married Edith on the 22nd March 1916 just before his posting to France. After spending 4 months in the trenches, Ronald succumbed to "trench fever" and was sent back to England where he spent a further month in hospital. Having lost a number of his closest friends from university in the war, Ronald put together a book of stories with the fallen men as inspiration. These stories included his own languages of Qenya and Goldogrin.

On 16th November 1917, Edith bore Ronald's first son; John Francis Reuel. Ronald applied for a senior position of Reader of English Language at the University of Leeds, for which he was possibly under qualified, however, he was quickly accepted. During his time at Leeds Ronald began to develop an Elvish language. Following this acceptance, the couple's second son, Michael Hilary Reuel was born in October 1920. After spending some time at Leeds, Ronald returned to Oxford University as a professor and was granted a third son, Christopher Reuel in 1924 and a daughter, Priscilla in 1929. He retired from his professorship at Oxford in 1959.

Ronald also had a very active social life outside of the university and became a founding member of a group of men from around Oxford with similar interests in writing, they called themselves "The Inklings". A notable member of this society was C.S. Lewis, who went on to become one of Ronald's closest friends.

The story of Ronald's most famous words began one day when he was marking examination papers and discovered that one student had left one of the pages completely blank and had simply written,

"In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit."

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This sparked an interest in Ronald as he became intensely curious as to what a Hobbit was, and what sort of hole it lived in. The character of the Hobbit became central to a tale that he told to his children, and eventually began to circulate. In 1936 an incomplete typescript came to Susan Dagnall of a publishing firm that would eventually become HarperCollins in 1990. She asked him to finish it and "The Hobbit" was published in 1937. Following the success of "The Hobbit", Ronald was asked to submit more written work to the publishing company, however, a lot of this was sadly rejected until he was eventually asked to write a sequel; "The New Hobbit". This soon developed into something much more complex than a children's story; a 16-year history that became "The Lord of the Rings". Rayner Urwin of the publishing company took a big risk on the publication of these books as they were expected to make a loss of over £1000, however, upon their release between 1954 and 1955 it became apparent that they had been greatly underestimated. "Lord of the Rings" received a wide variety of reviews; some very negative, and others from writers like C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden, incredibly positive. The books continued to grow in popularity when pirate copies were released in paper back and by 1968 "Lord of the Rings" had come to be thought of as the Bible of the "alternative society". The publicity surrounding Ronald eventually became so great that he was forced to move with Edith to Bournemouth to find some form of escape. It was here that Edith came to pass away in 1971 and following her death, Ronald returned to Oxford before his death on 2nd September 1973. The couple are buried together in a single grave in a Catholic section of Wolvercote cemetery.