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18th Century
Migration of the Tollkiehn family from Saxony (Germany) to England, changing the name to Tolkien.
1891
Mabel Suffield marries Arthur Reuel Tolkien, a bank manager for the Bank of Africa, who moved to South Africa when he left his job at Lloyds Bank in Birmingham, England.
1892
On January 3rd, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien ("Ronald") was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
Tolkien Family in Bloemfontein, 1892
1894
John Ronald's only brother, Hilary, was born.
1896
On February 15th, Arthur Tolkien dies after having contracted rheumatic fever. Mabel Tolkien, John Ronald and Hilary return to the West Midlands in England. They grow up in the rural village Sarehole with its mill, and in the city of Birmingham.
1900
Mabel Tolkien becomes a roman catholic. The priest, who visits the family often is Father Francis Xavier Morgan, half-Spanish, half-Welsh.
Father Francis Morgan
1904
Mabel Tolkien is diagnosed with diabetes, which, at that time, is incurable. She dies on the 15th of October. The boys are taken into care by aunt Beatrice Suffield and by Father Morgan. Later they live at Mrs Faulkner's.
In that time John Ronald visits King Edward VI Grammar School in Birmingham. During that time, his interests in linguistics become more pronounced. Together with some King Edward's friends, he forms the "T. C. B. S." (Tea Club, Barrovian Society, named after their meeting place at the Barrow Stores) .
Ronald and Hilary Tolkien, 1905
1908
Being lodged at Mrs Faulkner's, John Ronald meets Edith Bratt, a 19-year old woman. Father Francis Morgan forbides a relationship until he is 21 and able to take care of himself.
Edith Bratt, 1906
1911
J.R.R. Tolkien went up to Exeter College, Oxford. He studied the Classics, Old English, the Germanic languages (especially Gothic), Welsh and Finnish.
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1911
1913
When he was 21, Tolkien contacted Edith, but they had grown apart and she had become engaged to someone else. Tolkien persuaded her to break her engagement and become engaged to him.
He then obtained a disappointing second class degree in Honour Moderations, the "midway" stage of a 4-year Oxford "Greats" (i.e. Classics) course, although with an "alpha plus" in philology. As a result of this he changed his school from Classics to the more congenial English Language and Literature.
In this summer, he was fascinated by the poem "Crist of Cynewulf", especially the lines "Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast Ofer middangeard monnum sended", which means "Hail Earendel brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men ".
1915
J.R.R. Tolkien obtained a first class degree at Oxford in English. In this year he joined the Lancashire Fusileers, mobilised after the outbreak of WW1 in 1914.
1916
John Ronald Tolkien marries Edith Bratt. After his marriage, he was posted to France. Tolkien fought at the Somme and was invalided home with trench fever. Two of his three closest school friends, members of the T.C.B.S., died in WW1.
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1916
1917
In early 1917 he began work on what was to become The Silmarillion - his great work of language and mythology. It was when he was stationed at Hull that he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and there in a grove thick with hemlock Edith danced for him. This was the inspiration for the tale of Beren and Lúthien, a recurrent theme in his "Legendarium". The Tale of Beren and Luthien Tinuviel always remained his favourite. Edith, he said, was his Luthien.
Their first son, John Francis Reuel (later Father John Tolkien) had been born on 16 November 1917.
1918-1920
In 1918, J.R.R. Tolkien obtained academic employment, and by the time he was demobilised he had been appointed Assistant Lexicographer on the New English Dictionary (the "Oxford English Dictionary") in Oxford. In 1920, he applied to become Reader (Associate Professor) in English Language at the University of Leeds, and to his surprise was appointed.
During these years, he read on of his stories, The Fall of Gondolin, to the Exeter College Essay Club, where it was well received by an audience which included Neville Coghill and Hugo Dyson, two future "Inklings".
1920-1925
At Leeds as well as teaching he collaborated with E. V. Gordon on the famous edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1924). In addition, he and Gordon founded a "Viking Club" for undergraduates devoted mainly to reading Old Norse sagas and drinking beer. During thise times, he continued writing and refining The Book of Lost Tales and his invented "Elvish" languages
Leeds also saw the birth of two more sons: Michael Hilary Reuel in October 1920, and Christopher Reuel in 1924.
Then in 1925 the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford fell vacant; Tolkien successfully applied for the post.
1925-1935
Tolkien did not publish very much academic research. However, his rare scholarly publications were often extremely influential, most notably his lecture "Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics". He did, however, have a heavy teaching load.
At Oxford, the Inklings was formed. This was a group of Christian, conservative, Oxford writers who met informally and convivially. Besides Tolkien, its members included Messrs Coghill and Dyson, as well as Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and above all C. S. Lewis, who became one of Tolkien's closest friends. The Inklings regularly met for conversation, drink, and frequent reading from their work-in-progress.
Edith bore their last child and only daughter, Priscilla, in 1929. Tolkien got into the habit of writing the children annual illustrated letters as if from Santa Claus, and a selection of these was published in 1976 as The Father Christmas Letters. In adulthood John entered the priesthood, Michael and Christopher both saw war service in the Royal Air Force. Afterwards Michael became a schoolmaster and Christopher a university lecturer, and Priscilla became a social worker.
Meanwhile Tolkien continued developing his mythology and languages. As mentioned above, he told his children stories, some of which he developed into those published posthumously as Mr. Bliss, Roverandom, Farmer Giles of Ham etc.
1935-1937
One day when he was marking examination papers, he discovered that one candidate had left one page of an answer-book blank. On this page, he wrote in an impulse "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit". He then decided he needed to find out what a Hobbit was, what sort of a hole it lived in, why it lived in a hole, etc.
From this investigation grew a tale that he told to his younger children, and even passed round. In 1936 an incomplete typescript of it came into the hands of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the publishing firm of George Allen and Unwin. She asked Tolkien to finish it, and presented the complete story to Stanley Unwin, the then Chairman of the firm. He tried it out on his 10-year old son Rayner, who wrote an approving report, and it was published as The Hobbit in 1937.
Tolkien family 1936
1937-1955
In 1945 he changed his chair to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he retained until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien and Edith Bratt lived quietly in the North Oxford suburb of Headington.
The Hobbit was so successful that Stanley Unwin asked if he had any more similar material available for publication. By this time Tolkien had begun to make his Legendarium into what he was now calling the full account Quenta Silmarillion, or Silmarillion for short. The publisher's reaction was that these were not commercially publishable, but asked him again if he was willing to write a sequel to The Hobbit.
This sequel soon developed into something much more than a children's story: The Lord of the Rings. Rayner Unwin, Stanley Unwin's son, again played a an important role in accepting the story for publishing. His father's firm decided to incur the probable loss of £1,000 for the succès d'estime, and publish it under the title of The Lord of the Rings in three parts during 1954 and 1955, with USA rights going to Houghton Mifflin. It soon became apparent that both author and publishers had greatly underestimated the work's public appeal.
JRR Tolkien
1955-1968
The Lord of the Rings had mixed reviews, ranging from the ecstatic (W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis) to the damning (E. Wilson, E. Muir, P. Toynbee). The really amazing moment was when The Lord of the Rings went into an American pirated paperback version in 1965. The publicity generated by the copyright dispute alerted millions of American readers to the existence of something outside their previous experience. By 1968 The Lord of the Rings had almost become the Bible of the "Alternative Society".
Being stalked by American fans, Tolkien had to change addresses and his telephone number went ex-directory.
Edith and Ronald Tolkien
1969-1973
After his retirement in 1969 Edith and Ronald moved to Bournemouth.
On 22 November 1971 Edith died, and Ronald soon returned to Oxford, to rooms provided by Merton College. Ronald died on 2 September 1973. He and Edith are buried together in a single grave in the Catholic section of Wolvercote cemetery in the northern suburbs of Oxford.
One of the last pictures taken of JRR Tolkien, 1973
In the headstone, the following text is inscripted:
Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889-1971
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973
The Grave of Ronald and Edith Tolkien
1973-
Poshumously, Tolkiens "Legendarium", the stories concerning the first and second Era, were published by Allen & Unwin. J.R.R.Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien, took up the task of editing, completing and publishing his father's life work. This resulted in the publication of "The Silmarillion" (1977), "Unfinished Tales" (1980) and the "History of Middle Earth series" (1984-1997).
Furthermore, other stories, such as Mr. Bliss, Roverandom and Father Christmas Letters, were published.
NOTE: Sources used for this biography:
- Humphrey Carpenter: J.R.R. Tolkien, A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. ISBN 0-04-928037-6
Pictures appearing on this page were obtained from the source mentioned above.
- David Doughan: Who was Tolkien?
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