After Tolkien's death his sonChristopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, includingThe Silmarillion. These, together withThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales,poems, fictional histories,invented languages, and literary essays about a fantasy world calledArda and, within it,Middle-earth. Between 1951 and 1955 Tolkien applied the termlegendarium to the larger part of these writings.
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the tremendous success ofThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings igniteda profound interest in the fantasy genre and ultimately precipitated an avalanche of new fantasy books and authors. This has led to his popular identification as the "father" ofmodern fantasy literature. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of all time.
Tolkien was English, and thought of himself as such.[3][T 1] His immediate paternal ancestors were middle-class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in London andBirmingham. The Tolkien family originated in theEast Prussian town ofKreuzburg nearKönigsberg, which had been founded during the medievalGerman eastward expansion, where his earliest-known paternal ancestor, Michel Tolkien, was born around 1620.[4]
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. John Benjamin's brother Daniel Gottlieb Tolkien obtained British citizenship in 1794, but John Benjamin Tolkien apparently never became a British citizen. Other German relatives 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 whowere evacuated from East Prussia in 1945, at the end of theSecond World War.[5][4][6]
According to Ryszard Derdziński, the surname Tolkien is ofLow Prussian origin and probably means "son/descendant of Tolk".[5][4] Tolkien mistakenly believed his surname derived from the German wordtollkühn, meaning "foolhardy",[7] and jokingly inserted himself as a "cameo" intoThe Notion Club Papers under the literally translated name Rashbold.[8] However, Derdziński has demonstrated this to be afalse etymology. Another suspected origin is the East Prussian village ofTołkiny.[9] 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".[5][4]
Childhood
1892 Christmas card with a coloured photo of the Tolkien family in Bloemfontein, sent to relatives in Birmingham, England
As a child Tolkien was bitten by a largebaboon 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 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.[11]
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 ofrheumatic fever before he could join them.[12] This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took him to live with her parents inKings Heath,[13] Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved toSarehole (now inHall Green), then aWorcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham.[14] He enjoyed exploringSarehole Mill andMoseley Bog and theClent,Lickey andMalvern Hills, which would later inspire scenes in his books, along with nearby towns and villages such asBromsgrove,Alcester andAlvechurch and places such as his aunt Jane's farm Bag End, the name of which he used in his fiction.[15]
Mabel Tolkien taught her two children at home. Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil.[16] She taught him a great deal ofbotany 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 ofLatin very early.[17]
Tolkien could read by the age of four and could write fluently soon afterwards. His mother allowed him to read many books. He dislikedTreasure Island and "The Pied Piper" and thoughtAlice's Adventures in Wonderland byLewis Carroll was "amusing". He liked stories about "Red Indians" (the term then used for Native Americans inadventure stories[18]) and works of fantasy byGeorge MacDonald.[19] In addition, the "Fairy Books" ofAndrew Lang were particularly important to him and their influence is apparent in some of his later writings.[20]
Birmingham Oratory, where Tolkien was a parishioner and altar boy (1902–1911)
Mabel Tolkien was received into theRoman Catholic Church in 1900 despite vehement protests by herBaptist family,[21] which stopped all financial assistance to her. In 1904, when J. R. R. Tolkien was 12, his mother died ofacute diabetes at Fern Cottage inRednal, which she was renting. She was then about 34 years of age, about as old as a person withdiabetes mellitus type 1 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."[21]
Before her death, Mabel Tolkien had assigned the guardianship of her sons to her close friend, FatherFrancis Xavier Morgan of theBirmingham Oratory, who was assigned to bring them up as good Catholics.[22] 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 wasnot. 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' than theMother of Jesus—who was never mentioned except as an object of wicked worship by the Romanists."[T 2] After his mother's death, Tolkien grew up in theEdgbaston area of Birmingham and attendedKing Edward's School, Birmingham, and laterSt Philip's School. In 1903, he won a Foundation Scholarship and returned to King Edward's.[23]
Youth
King Edward's School in Birmingham, where Tolkien was a pupil (1900–1902, 1903–1911)[24]Tolkien at age 19, 1911
While in his early teens, Tolkien had his first encounter with aconstructed language, Animalic, an invention of his cousins, Mary andMarjorie Incledon. 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.[25][26] Tolkien learnedEsperanto 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.[27] Short texts in this notebook are written in Esperanto.[28]
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 inBarrow's Stores near the school and, secretly, in the school library.[29][30] 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 towriting poetry.[31]
In 1911, Tolkien went on a summer holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollected vividly in a 1968 letter,[T 3] noting thatBilbo's journey across theMisty Mountains ("including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods") is directly based on his adventures as their party of 12 hiked fromInterlaken toLauterbrunnen and on to camp in themoraines beyondMürren. Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembered his regret at leaving the view of the eternal snows ofJungfrau andSilberhorn, "the Silvertine (Celebdil) of my dreams". They went across theKleine Scheidegg toGrindelwald and on across theGrosse Scheidegg toMeiringen. They continued across theGrimsel Pass, through the upperValais toBrig and on to theAletsch glacier andZermatt.[32]
In October of the same year, Tolkien began studying atExeter College, Oxford. He initially readclassics but changed his course in 1913 to English language andliterature, graduating in 1915 withfirst-class honours.[33] Among his tutors at Oxford wasJoseph Wright, whosePrimer of the Gothic Language had inspired Tolkien as a schoolboy.[34]
Courtship and marriage
At the age of 16, Tolkien metEdith 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. 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."[35]
His guardian, Father Morgan, considered it "altogether unfortunate"[T 4] that his surrogate son was romantically involved with an older,Protestant woman; Tolkien wrote that the combined tensions contributed to his having "muffed [his] exams".[T 4] Morgan prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with Edith until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed this prohibition to the letter,[36] with one notable early exception, over which Father Morgan threatened to cut short his university career if he did not stop.[37]
On the evening of his 21st birthday Tolkien wrote to Edith, who was living with a family friend named C. H. Jessop inCheltenham. 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.[38]
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".[38] 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."[39]
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 ... stronglyanti-Catholic", was infuriated, and he ordered Edith to find other lodgings.[40]
Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were formally engaged at Birmingham in January 1913, and married atSt Mary Immaculate Catholic Church atWarwick, on 22 March 1916.[41] 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.[T 4]
First World War
Tolkien in his military uniform
In August 1914 Britain entered theFirst World War. Tolkien's relatives were shocked when he elected not to volunteer immediately for theBritish Army. 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."[T 4] Instead, Tolkien, "endured theobloquy",[T 4] 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".[T 4] He was commissioned as a temporarysecond lieutenant in theLancashire Fusiliers on 15 July 1915.[42][43] He trained with the 13th (Reserve) Battalion onCannock Chase, Rugeley Camp near toRugeley, Staffordshire, for eleven months. In a letter to Edith, Tolkien complained: "Gentlemen are rare among the superiors, and even human beings rare indeed."[44] Following their wedding Lieutenant and Mrs. Tolkien took up lodgings near the training camp.[42] On 2 June 1916 Tolkien received a telegram summoning him toFolkestone for posting to France. The Tolkiens spent the night before his departure in a room at the Plough & Harrow Hotel in Edgbaston, Birmingham.[45] He later wrote: "Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then ... it was like a death."[46]
France
On 5 June 1916 Tolkien boarded a troop transport for an overnight voyage toCalais. Like other soldiers arriving for the first time, he was sent to theBritish Expeditionary Force's base depot atÉtaples. 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 the74th Brigade,25th Division. While waiting to be summoned to his unit, Tolkien sank into boredom. To pass the time, he composed a poem titledThe Lonely Isle, which was inspired by his feelings during the sea crossing to Calais. To evade the British Army'spostal censorship, he developed a code of dots by which Edith could track his movements.[47] He left Étaples on 27 June 1916 and joined his battalion atRubempré, nearAmiens.[48] He found himself commanding enlisted men who were drawn mainly from the mining, milling, and weaving towns of Lancashire.[49] According toJohn 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."[50] 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."[50]
Tolkien arrived at theSomme in early July 1916. In between terms behind the lines atBouzincourt, he participated in the assaults on theSchwaben Redoubt and theLeipzig salient. 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 theWestern 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 ofhors d'oeuvre and the little beggars went at their feast with renewed vigour."[51] On 27 October 1916, as his battalion attackedRegina Trench, Tolkien contractedtrench fever, a disease carried bylice. He was invalided to England on 8 November 1916.[52]
According to his childrenJohn andPriscilla Tolkien, "In later years, he would occasionally talk of being at the front: of the horrors of the first Germangas attack, of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men's equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going. ... Some remarkable relics survive from that time: a trench map he drew himself; pencil-written orders to carry bombs to the 'fighting line.'"[53]
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 thefirst day of the Somme while leading his men in the assault onBeaumont 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.[54]
Men of the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers in a communication trench nearBeaumont Hamel, 1916. Photo byErnest Brooks
According to John Garth,Kitchener's Army, in which Tolkien served, 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 theTommy; especially the plain soldier from the agricultural counties".[55]
A weak and emaciated Tolkien spent the remainder of the war alternating between hospitals and garrison duties, being deemed medically unfit for general service.[56][57][58] During his recovery in a cottage inLittle Haywood,Staffordshire, he began to work on what he calledThe Book of Lost Tales, beginning withThe Fall of Gondolin.Lost Tales represented Tolkien's attempt to create a mythology for England, a project he would abandon without ever completing.[59] 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 greatU-boat campaign) round about theBattle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed as far off as it does now".[T 4] Tolkien was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 6 January 1918.[60] When he was stationed atKingston upon Hull, he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearbyRoos, and Edith began to dance for him in a clearing among the flowering hemlock. After his wife's death in 1971, Tolkien remembered:[T 5]
I never called EdithLuthien—but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of theSilmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks[61] at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing—anddance. But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, andI cannot plead before the inexorableMandos.[T 5]
On 16 July 1919, Tolkien was taken off active service, at Fovant, on Salisbury Plain, with a temporary disability pension.[62] On 3 November 1920, Tolkien was demobilized and left the army, retaining his rank of lieutenant.[63]
Academic and writing career
2 Darnley Road, the former home of Tolkien in West Park,Leeds20Northmoor Road, one of Tolkien's former homes inOxford
After the end of the war in 1918, Tolkien's first civilian job was at theOxford English Dictionary, where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letterW.[64] In mid-1919, he began to tutor Oxford undergraduates privately, most importantly those ofLady Margaret Hall andSt 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 academic (then still not common) was considered suitable, as a bachelor don would not have been.[65]
In 1920 he took up a post asreader in English language at theUniversity of Leeds, becoming the youngest member of theacademic staff there.[66] While at Leeds, he producedA Middle English Vocabulary and a definitive edition ofSir Gawain and the Green Knight withE. V. Gordon; both became academic standard works for several decades. He also translatedSir Gawain,Pearl andSir Orfeo, but the translations were not published until 1975. In 1924 he was promoted from a readership at Leeds to aprofessorship.[67]
In the 1920s Tolkien undertook a translation ofBeowulf, which he finished in 1926, but did not publish. It was later edited by his son Christopher and published in 2014.[70]
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 onBeowulf research.[71] 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.[72] At the time, the consensus of scholarship deprecatedBeowulf for dealing with childish battles with monsters rather than realistic tribal warfare; Tolkien argued that the author ofBeowulf was addressing human destiny in general, not as limited by particular tribal politics, and therefore the monsters were essential to the poem.[73] WhereBeowulf does deal with specific tribal struggles, as atFinnsburg, Tolkien argued firmly against reading in fantastic elements.[74] In the essay, Tolkien revealed how highly he regardedBeowulf: "Beowulf is among my most valued sources";this influence may be seen throughout hisMiddle-earthlegendarium.[75]
According to Tolkien's biographerHumphrey Carpenter, Tolkien began his series of lectures onBeowulf 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 ofHwæt!" It was a dramatic impersonation of an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it made the students realize thatBeowulf was not just a set text but "a powerful piece of dramatic poetry".[76] Decades later,W. H. Auden wrote to his former professor, thanking him for the "unforgettable experience" of hearing him reciteBeowulf, and stating: "The voice was the voice ofGandalf".[76]
Second World War
Merton College, where Tolkien was Professor of English Language and Literature (1945–1959)
In the run-up to theSecond World War Tolkien was earmarked as acodebreaker. In January 1939 he was asked to serve in thecryptographic department of theForeign Office in the event of national emergency. Beginning on 27 March, he took an instructional course at the London headquarters of theGovernment Code and Cypher School. He was informed in October that his services would not be required.[77][T 6][78]
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 friendC. S. Lewis even nominated him for theNobel Prize in Literature.[86] The sales of his books were so profitable that he regretted that he had not chosen early retirement.[17] In a letter in 1972 he deplored having become acult figure, but admitted that "even the nose of a very modest idol ... cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell ofincense!"[T 7]
Fan attention became so intense that Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory;[T 8] eventually he and Edith moved toBournemouth, 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 fellowInklings. 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.[87]
In his retirement Tolkien was a consultant and translator forThe Jerusalem Bible, 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 theBook of Jonah.[T 9]
Edith died on 29 November 1971, at the age of 82. Ronald returned to Oxford, whereMerton College gave him convenient rooms near the High Street. He missed Edith, but enjoyed being back in the city.[88]
He had the nameLuthien [sic] engraved on Edith's tombstone atWolvercote Cemetery,Oxford. When Tolkien died 21 months later on 2 September 1973 from a bleeding ulcer and chest infection,[91] at the age of 81,[92] 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 £2,454,000 in 2023).[93][94]
Tolkien'sCatholicism was a significant factor inC. S. Lewis's conversion fromatheism to Christianity.[95] He once wrote toRayner Unwin'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."[96] He had a special devotion to theblessed sacrament, 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".[T 4] He accordingly encouraged frequent reception ofHoly 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.[T 11] In the last years of his life Tolkienresisted certain liturgical changes implemented after theSecond Vatican Council, his primary objection being the use of English for the liturgy.[97] Tolkien spoke Latin fluently, and he felt that the English translations were clumsy.[98] In his old age he continued to make the Mass responses in Latin.[88][99] Tolkien did not sign theAgatha Christie indult, however, and he served as alector at Corpus Christi, a parish church inHeadington, in accordance with the allowances of the Council.[100]
Government
Tolkien held deeply skeptical views of political authority, writing that "the most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men".[101] He distrusted bothmass democracy andcentralized state power, writing that not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity".[102][101] In one of his letters, Tolkien described his political leanings as "more and more toAnarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control,not whiskered men with bombs)".[T 12][102][103] He explained that he was "not a democrat, only because humility andequality are spiritual principles, not political ones".[102]
Tolkien believed small-scale, community policing was more effective than state-control.[102] He also believed that power itself, even when well-intentioned, carries a corrupting influence. This philosophical theme runs throughThe Lord of the Rings, where Tolkien writes that Gandalf rejects using theOne Ring for good due to its ability to corrupt.[104][102] The books also portray the desire to dominate others as the original and enduring temptation of evil.
Tolkien'sMiddle-earth fantasy writings have been said to embody outmoded attitudes torace.[105] However, scholars have noted that he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, and that he wasanti-racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars. With the late-19th-century background ofeugenics and a fear of moral decline, some critics believed that the mention ofrace mixing inThe Lord of the Rings embodiedscientific racism.[106] Critics have noted, too, that the work embodies amoral geography, with good in the West, evil in the East.[107] Against this, Tolkien strongly opposedNazi racial theories, as seen in a 1938 letter he wrote to his publisher, while during the Second World War he vigorously opposedanti-German propaganda.[108][109] His Middle-earth has been described as definitely polycultural and polylingual, while scholars have noted that attacks on Tolkien based onThe Lord of the Rings often omit relevant evidence from the text.[110][111] A spokesman forHarperCollins, publisher of the trilogy, said: "A number of academics have commented on Tolkien's work and this is the first time anybody has ever seen these issues in it. Of course, if you look hard enough at many great epics, you can extrapolate what you like, particularly if you have academic kudos behind you."[112]
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 ofThe 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.[113][114][115]
Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especiallyThe Lord of the Rings andThe Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences, including hisphilological interest in language,[116] Christianity,[117][118]medievalism,[119]mythology,archaeology,[120] ancient and modern literature and personal experience. His philological work centred on the study ofOld English literature, especiallyBeowulf, and he acknowledged its importance to his writings.[121] He was a gifted linguist, influenced by Germanic,[122] Celtic,[123] Finnish,[124] and Greek[125][126] 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 theArts and Crafts polymathWilliam Morris,[127] and he undoubtedly made use of some real place-names, such as Bag End, the name of his aunt's home.[128] He acknowledged, too,John Buchan andH. Rider Haggard, authors ofEdwardian adventure stories that he enjoyed.[129][130][131] The effects of some specific experiences have been identified. Tolkien's childhood in the English countryside, and its urbanization by the growth ofBirmingham, influenced his creation ofthe Shire,[132] while his personal experience offighting in the trenches of the First World War affected his depiction ofMordor.[133]
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 epicBeowulf by literary critics. The essay remains highly influential in the study of Old English literature to this day.[134]Beowulf is one of themost significant influences upon Tolkien's later fiction, with major details of bothThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings being adapted from the poem.[135]
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 onAndrew Lang's work as a folklorist and collector of fairy tales. He disagreed with Lang's broad inclusion, in hisFairy 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 inFaerie, 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.[136]
Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book calledThe Hobbit, 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 firmGeorge Allen & Unwin, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for publication.[92] 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.[140]
The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what became his most famous work: the epic novelThe Lord of the Rings (originally published in three volumes in 1954–1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices forThe Lord of the Rings, during which time he received the constant support of theInklings, in particular his closest friend C. S. Lewis, the author ofThe Chronicles of Narnia. BothThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings are set against the background ofThe Silmarillion, but in a time long after it.[141]
Tolkien at first intendedThe Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in the style ofThe Hobbit, but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing.[142] Though a direct sequel toThe Hobbit, it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immensebackstory ofBeleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication inThe Silmarillion and other volumes.[141] Tolkien strongly influenced thefantasy genre that grew up after the book's success.[143]
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.[144] In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC,The Lord of the Rings was found to be the UK's "Best-loved Novel".[145] Australians votedThe Lord of the Rings "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by theAustralian ABC.[146] In a 1999 poll ofAmazon.com customers,The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium".[147] In 2002 Tolkien was voted the 92nd "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC, and in 2004 he was voted 35th in theSABC3's Great South Africans, the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited to theEnglish-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans foundThe Lord of the Rings to be their favourite work of literature.[148]
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 theQuenta Silmarillion, an epic history that Tolkien started three times but never published. Tolkien desperately hoped to publish it along withThe Lord of the Rings, but publishers (bothAllen & Unwin andCollins) declined. Moreover, printing costs were very high in 1950s Britain, requiringThe Lord of the Rings to be published in three volumes.[149] The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous seriesThe History of Middle-earth, edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien. From around 1936, Tolkien began to extend this framework to include the tale ofThe Fall of Númenor, which was inspired by the legend ofAtlantis.[150]
Tolkien appointed his son Christopher to be hisliterary executor, and he (with assistance fromGuy Gavriel Kay, later a well-known fantasy author in his own right) organized some of this material into a single coherent volume, published asThe Silmarillion in 1977. It received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel in 1978.[151]
Unfinished Tales andThe History of Middle-earth
In 1980, Christopher Tolkien published a collection of more fragmentary material, under the titleUnfinished 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 calledThe History of Middle-earth. 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 betweenThe Lord of the Rings andThe Hobbit, the two most closely related works, because Tolkien never fully integrated all their traditions into each other. He commented in 1965, while editingThe Hobbit for a third edition, that he would have preferred to rewrite the book completely because of the style of its prose.[152]
A narrative poem that Tolkien composed in the early 1930s, inspired by high medieval Arthurian fiction but set in the Post-RomanMigration Period, showing Arthur as aBritishwarlord fighting theSaxon invasion.[155]
Tells of a beautiful, mysterious city destroyed by dark forces; Tolkien called it "the first real story" ofMiddle-earth.[160][161]
Manuscript locations
Before his death, Tolkien negotiated the sale of the manuscripts, drafts, proofs and other materials related to his then-published works—includingThe Lord of the Rings,The Hobbit andFarmer Giles of Ham—to the Department of Special Collections and University Archives atMarquette University's John P. Raynor, S.J., Library inMilwaukee, Wisconsin, United States.[162] After his death his estate donated the papers containing Tolkien'sSilmarillion mythology and his academic work to theBodleian Library atOxford University.[163] The Bodleian Library held an exhibition of his work in 2018, including more than 60 items which had never been seen in public before.[164]
In 2009 a partial draft ofLanguage and Human Nature, which Tolkien had begun co-writing with Lewis but had never completed, was discovered at the Bodleian Library.[165]
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language andphilology. He specialized in English philology at university and in 1915 graduated withOld Norse as his special subject. He worked on theOxford English Dictionary from 1918 and is credited with having worked on a number of words starting with the letter W, includingwalrus, over which he struggled mightily.[166][167] In 1920 he became Reader in English Language at theUniversity of Leeds, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students oflinguistics from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old Englishheroic verse,history of English, variousOld English andMiddle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductoryGermanic philology,Gothic,Old Icelandic andMedieval Welsh. When in 1925, aged thirty-three, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon atPembroke College, Oxford, he boasted that his students of Germanic philology in Leeds had even formed a "Viking Club".[T 13] He had a certain, if imperfect, knowledge ofFinnish.[168]
Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things ofracial and linguistic significance", and in his 1955 lectureEnglish and Welsh, 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.[169] He considered theWest Midlands dialect of Middle English to be his own "native language", and, as he wrote toW. H. Auden 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)."[T 14]
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 forconstructing languages. The most developed of these areQuenya andSindarin, the etymological connection between which formed the core of much of Tolkien'slegendarium. Language and grammar for Tolkien was a matter ofaesthetics andeuphony, 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.[T 15]
Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view ofauxiliary languages: in 1930 a congress of Esperantists were told as much by him, in his lectureA Secret Vice,[170] "Your language construction will breed a mythology", but by 1956 he had concluded that "Volapük,Esperanto,Ido,Novial, &c, &c, are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends".[T 16]
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 now commonly accept Tolkien's idiosyncratic spellingsdwarves anddwarvish (alongsidedwarfs anddwarfish), which had been little used since the mid-19th century and earlier. (In fact, according to Tolkien, had theOld English plural survived, it would have beendwarrows ordwerrows.) He coined the termeucatastrophe, used mainly in connection with his own work.[171]
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 produced pictures to accompany the stories told to his own children, including those later published inMr Bliss andRoverandom, 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 ofThe Hobbit. He prepared maps and illustrations forThe Lord of the Rings, but the first edition contained only the maps, hiscalligraphy for the inscription on the One Ring, and his ink drawing of theDoors of Durin. Much ofhis 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.[172]Catherine McIlwaine curated a major exhibition of Tolkien's artwork at theBodleian 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.[173]
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success ofThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings led directly toa 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[174][175]—or, more precisely, of high fantasy,[176] as in the work of authors such asUrsula Le Guin and herEarthsea series.[177] In 2008The Times ranked him sixth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[178] His influence has extended tomusic, including the Danish groupthe Tolkien Ensemble's setting of all thepoetry inThe Lord of the Rings to their vocal music;[179] and to a broad range ofgames set in Middle-earth.[180] Among literary allusions to Tolkien, he appears as the elderly "Professor J. B. Timbermill" in all five novels inJ. I. M. Stewart's seriesA Staircase in Surrey.[181][182] The scholarTom Shippey describes Tolkien as the "author of the [20th] century",[183] and states that "I do not think any modern writer of epic fantasy has managed to escape the mark of Tolkien, no matter how hard many of them have tried".[184]John Clute, writing inThe Encyclopedia of Fantasy, similarly credits Tolkien with being "the twentieth-century's single most important author of fantasy".[185] His work has had a massive impact on western pop culture, and remains extremely influential.[186]
In a 1951 letter to the publisherMilton Waldman (1895–1976), Tolkien wrote about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "[t]he cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama".[T 17] The hands and minds of many artists have indeed been inspired by Tolkien's legends. Personally known to him werePauline Baynes (Tolkien's favourite illustrator ofThe Adventures of Tom Bombadil andFarmer Giles of Ham) andDonald Swann (who set the music toThe Road Goes Ever On). QueenMargrethe II of Denmark created illustrations toThe 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.[187] Tolkien was not implacably opposed to the idea of a dramatic adaptation, however, and sold the film, stage and merchandise rights ofThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings toUnited Artists in 1968. United Artists never made a film, although the directorJohn Boorman was planning a live-action film in the early 1970s. In 1976 the rights were sold toTolkien Enterprises, a division of theSaul Zaentz Company, and the first film adaptation ofThe Lord of the Rings was released in 1978 as an animatedrotoscoping film directed byRalph Bakshi with screenplay by the fantasy writerPeter S. Beagle. It covered only the first half of the story ofThe Lord of the Rings.[188]
In 1977an animated musical television film ofThe Hobbit was made byRankin-Bass, and in 1980 they produced the animated musical television filmThe Return of the King, which covered some of the portions ofThe Lord of the Rings that Bakshi was unable to complete. From 2001 to 2003New Line Cinema releasedThe Lord of the Rings as a trilogy of live-action films that were filmed in New Zealand and directed byPeter Jackson. The series was successful, performing extremely well commercially and winning numerousOscars.[189] From 2012 to 2014Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema releasedThe Hobbit, a series of three films based onThe Hobbit, with Peter Jackson serving as executive producer, director, and co-writer.[190]
On 2 September 2017 theOxford Oratory, Tolkien's parish church during his time in Oxford, offered its firstMass for the intention of Tolkien's cause forbeatification to be opened.[193][194] A prayer was written for his cause.[193]
The religious experience of Tolkien was described byHolly Ordway in the bookTolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography (2023).
Severalblue plaques in England commemorate places associated with Tolkien, including for his childhood, his workplaces, and places he visited.[45][211][212]
^Tolkien, Christopher, ed. (1988).The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One. The History of Middle-earth. Vol. 6.ISBN0-04-440162-0.
^Brennan, David (21 September 2018)."The Hobbit: How Tolkien Sunk a German Anti-Semitic Inquiry Into His Race".Newsweek.Archived from the original on 26 April 2024. Retrieved9 July 2023.My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject – which should be sufficient.
^"Ash nazg gimbatul".Der Spiegel (in German). No. 35/1969. 25 August 1969.Archived from the original on 27 April 2011.Professor Tolkien, der seinen Namen vom deutschen Wort 'tollkühn' ableitet,... .
^Cawthorne, Nigel (2012).A Brief Guide to J. R. R. Tolkien: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Author ofThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings. London: Robinson.ISBN978-1-78033-860-6.
^Butts, Dennis (2004)."Shaping boyhood: British Empire builders and adventurers". In Hunt, Peter (ed.).International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Vol. 1 (Second ed.). Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge. pp. 340–351.ISBN0-203-32566-4.By the 1840s, of course, adults were already reading tales of adventure involving Red Indians
^Several of his service records, mostly dealing with his health problems, can be seen at the National Archives. ("Officer's service record: J R R Tolkien".First World War. National Archives. Archived fromthe original on 8 March 2009. Retrieved2 December 2007.)
^Clark, George; Timmons, Daniel, eds. (2000).J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth. Greenwood Publishing Group.[pages needed]
^Saguaro, Shelley; Thacker, Deborah Cogan (2013)."Tolkien and Trees"(PDF). In Hunt, Peter (ed.).J. R. R. Tolkien: New Casebook. Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-1-137-26399-5.Archived(PDF) from the original on 3 October 2016.
^Yolen, Jane (1992). "Introduction". In Greenberg, Martin H. (ed.).After the King: Stories in Honor of J. R. R. Tolkien. Macmillan. pp. vii–viii.ISBN0-312-85175-8.
^Niles, John D. (1998). "Beowulf, Truth, and Meaning". InBjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D. (eds.).ABeowulf Handbook. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. p. 5.ISBN0-8032-6150-0.Bypassing earlier scholarship, critics of the past fifty years have generally traced the current era ofBeowulf studies back to 1936 [and Tolkien's essay].
^"J. R. R. Tolkien Collection".Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University. 4 March 2003. Archived fromthe original on 12 January 1998.
^Winchester, Simon (2003).The meaning of everything: the story of the Oxford English dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-860702-4.OCLC52830480.
^Gilliver, Peter (2006).The ring of words: Tolkien and the Oxford English dictionary. Jeremy Marshall, E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-861069-4.OCLC65197968.
^Grotta, Daniel (1976).J.R.R. Tolkien: architect of Middle Earth. Frank Wilson. Philadelphia: Running Press.ISBN0-914294-29-6.OCLC1991974.
^Scull, Christina (2006).The J.R.R. Tolkien companion & guide. Wayne G. Hammond. Hammersmith, London: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 249.ISBN0-261-10381-4.OCLC82367707.
^Bernardo, Susan M. (2006).Ursula K. Le Guin: a critical companion. Graham J. Murphy. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. pp. 92–93.ISBN978-0-313-02730-7.OCLC230345464.
^Gray, Christopher (2 January 2014)."Affectionate memories of life at Christ Church".Oxford Mail. Retrieved24 November 2023.Lemprière then turns to the fictional output of his colleague J.B. Timbermill and observes: 'I suppose that rum book of his might be called a novel of sorts.' The 'rum book' isLord of the Rings ...
^Kaila, Lauri (1999). "A revision of the Nearctic species of the genusElachistas.l. III. Thebifasciella,praelineata,saccharella andfreyerella groups (Lepidoptera, Elachistidae)".Acta Zoologica Fennica.211:1–235.
Duriez, Colin; Porter, David (2001).The Inklings Handbook: The Lives, Thought and Writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Their Friends. London: Azure.ISBN978-1-902694-13-9.
Fredrick, Candice; McBride, Sam (2001).Woman among the Inklings: Gender, C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Greenwood Press.ISBN978-0-313-31245-8.
Glyer, Diana Pavlac (2007).The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.ISBN978-0-87338-890-0.
Grant, Patrick (1979). "Belief in Fantasy: J. R. R. Tolkien'sLord of the Rings".Six Modern Authors and Problems of Belief. MacMillan.ISBN978-0-333-26340-2.
White, Michael (2003).Tolkien: A Biography. New American Library.ISBN978-0-451-21242-9.
Zaleski, Philip; Zaleski, Carol (2016).The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.ISBN978-0-374-53625-1.
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