Last reviewed: June 2017
English writer, poet, and philologist.
January 3, 1892
Bloemfontein, South Africa
September 2, 1973
Bournemouth, England
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, one of two sons of Arthur Reuel and Mabel Suffield Tolkien. When he was four years old, his father died, and his mother returned to England, to a town near Birmingham. The verdant English countryside to which he was moved made an immediate impression on the boy; it was to become the locale for his now-famous fantasy world. Tolkien’s first teacher was his mother, and from her he acquired a love of languages and fantasy. Following her death in 1904 he and his brother were raised by Father Francis Xavier Morgan, a Roman Catholic priest. Tolkien received his secondary education at King Edward VI School in Birmingham and then attended Exeter College, Oxford, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1915. He then joined the Lancashire Fusiliers and served on the Western Front until the end of World War I. In 1916 he married Edith Mary Bratt; together they would have a daughter and three sons.
After the war, Tolkien returned to the University of Oxford and earned his master’s degree in 1919. His love of language led him to work for two years as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary. Between 1920 and 1925 he taught English at the University of Leeds. In 1925 he returned to Oxford as a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, soon becoming the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon. He was elected a fellow of Pembroke College in 1926 and was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. During these years he continued his work in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature and lore, publishing monographs and articles on works such as Beowulf and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Bust of writer J. R. R. Tolkien at the entrance to the chapel of Exeter College, Oxford, the work of the author's daughter, Faith Falcounbridge.
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When he was forty-five years old, The Hobbit, a novel for children, was published. It became an immediate success. Ostensibly based upon stories which he had created for the amusement of his children, The Hobbit, a heroic tale of dragons, giants, and heroes, appealed to both children and adults. Far more profound was The Lord of the Rings, which occupied him for fifteen years. This three-part work, which described the fantastic secondary world of Middle-Earth, with its own languages, history, customs, people, and geography, became enormously popular. Tolkien fan clubs and fan magazines emerged and flourished. During these years Tolkien received numerous awards and honors, ranging from children’s book awards to honorary doctorates.
Although he officially retired from his professorship in 1959, Tolkien continued to write about Middle-Earth. At his death in 1973 he left behind many notes and partially completed manuscripts. Some of these were collated by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and published in 1977 as The Silmarillion, the story of the creation of Middle-Earth. The Book of Lost Tales, a collection of Tolkien’s stories, was edited and published by his son in 1983 and 1984. Other posthumous works have followed.
Tolkien made his fictional world come alive. Because his fantasy world was firmly rooted in the medieval tradition, Tolkien’s professional specialty, and because he was a perfectionist regarding detail, his descriptions of Middle-Earth are consistent and absorbing. Within this world, heroic adventures could and did take place. That too was part of the medieval epic literary tradition. Tolkien used many of the traditional characteristics of the epic in his works: heroes, quests, visits to the underworld, and noble deaths in battle. His variation on the theme was his unheroic hero. Middle-Earth had to be saved by ordinary and even humble heroes. Moreover, the effort had to be commensurate with the result; good could not triumph without hardship and suffering.
While Tolkien stated that his works were neither allegorical nor topical, his stories have strong relevance for the modern world. His experiences in the trenches of World War I, as well as the totalitarianism of the pre-and post-World War II era, affected him deeply and often surface in his work. Tolkien was concerned with the problem of power—whether it be political, spiritual, or personal. All of his characters are forced to choose whether to accept or to reject power. Tolkien was also concerned with the theme of good versus evil. Although he has been criticized as simplistic, his attitude was not only medieval but also modern. He created a world in which dignity is alive and good can triumph over evil.
Tolkien’s significance lies in his ability to write literature which appeals to all ages. At the simplest level, his stories appeal to children. At a higher level, the heroic tales are delightful fiction. At a still higher level, the work enters the realm of ethical philosophy. Tolkien’s fantasy world provides a place where moral values exist and quests can still be achieved.