John ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in
1892 in Bloemfontein, in what is now South Africa. His name was
fairly normal but Reuel was a family name that meant “friend of
God” in Hebrew. Arthur and Mable, his parents, were from england
and met and married in africa. Tolkien was a weak child and the
wildlife and climate didn’t agree with him and his brother Hilary.
A tarantula bit him and that began his lifelong fear of spiders.
Maybe influencing Shelob in the Lord of the Rings and the horrors of Mirkwood in the Hobbit. Mable finally
decided to take the two boys to England and meet back in Africa with
Arthur when the boys were strong enough. Soon after they left, Arthur
died of an untreated flu. Tolkien always felt like it was his fault,
because his mother could have helped his father if he hadn’t been
weak. Tolkien and the rest of the family settled in Sarehole, a town
near Birmingham. When writing, Tolkien would base the shire and
hobbits from the people who lived there. The long walks through the
fields were good for Tolkien and inspired his imagination. He
invented three or four languages before he was 10. Mable disapproved
of such activities because they took away from studies. Tolkien was
already a lazy student but so smart that he learned wether he wanted
to or not. In 1903 he won a scholarship to the King Edward the sixth
school in Birmingham, the best school in the area. Mable died in 1904
but Mable had prepared and they were sent to an private orphanage.
Tolkien never stopped loving
languages, and by the age of 16 he mastered Greek, Latin, and was
very close to mastering Anglo-Saxon. He also fell in love with another orphan,
Edith mary Bratt, she was two years older than him. She was worried
that him and his brother did not get enough to eat so she persuaded a
maid to help her create a trolly between the kitchen to their
bedroom. When they were found out, their relationship was also
uncovered and she was forbidden to see, visit, or write to each
other. That kept them apart until she was an adult and he was in
oxford.
The war was coming quickly when he
was in Oxford, but he was determined to finish before going to war.
When he did, he was rewarded second lieutenant because of his degree.
The war left scar after scar on his life until he went down with
trench fever. While in the hospital he wrote the Silmarillian to
create a mythology and background for his Elvish language. He was
released from the war in 1919. when he returned, he found most of
friends dead.
He had recently married his childhood
love, Edith, and they had their first son John Francis Reuel Tolkien.
He became a tutor and substitute teacher. He had his second son in
1920 and in 1921 he was named Reader of the English Language at the
university of Leeds. later he was named the Professor of the English
Language in 1924. His students remember him puffing on a pipe,
drinking large quantities of beer and telling jokes. A year later he
accepted a position at Oxford, The chair of Bosworth and Rawlinson
Professor of Anglo-saxon. Tolkien had a group of friends like C.S.
Lewis and Owen Barfield that met and conversed about their writings,
for 30 years, they were called the inklings. The Hobbit was published
in 1936 and he began on the Lord of the Rings in 1937. the Inklings
helped to shape these great books through the years. The final draft
was in 1949. At first he opposed the though of splitting them up but
he was soon persuaded. He became outrageously famous. Receiving many
awards. His mail was always full and he spent a lot of time writing
back and answering question after question. He was one of the most
famous writers in the world, as was his friend C.S. Lewis.
In 1972 Edith died from illness and
Tolkien was never the same. He was very lonely for the last year of
his life, no matter how many visits his children made. He died in
1973.
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