Tuesday 9 November 2010

What About The Author?

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, the son of an English bank manager. But he was destined to be an orphan by the age of 12 when his mother died, his father having already died when the young Tolkien was only 3.

Educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Exeter College, Oxford, Tolkien graduated in 1915 with a first class honours degree in English Language and Literature.


The following year he was to marry Edith Bratt whom he had first met when he was just 16. The relationship was prohibited by his Catholic guardian, Father Francis Morgan, on the grounds that Edith was Protestant. Upon threats to terminate his university education, Tolkien was forbidden to meet with her again until he was 21. Tolkien waited.

On the day of his 21st birthday, he contacted Edith. In the belief that he had forgotten her, she had become engaged to another man. They met under a railway bridge and renewed their love for each other. The engagement ring was returned and she married Tolkien.

The Hobbit (published in 1937) and the first two volumes of the sequel The Lord of the Rings (published 1954-55) were written while Tolkien was a fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. The Lord of the Rings comprises three volumes - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King.


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Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings when he was aged 45 to be finished 12 years later but it would not be published until he was actually 63 years old! Throughout its composition, Tolkien held a full-time academic position and was an examiner, so progress was inevitably slow.

His own life experiences inevitably found expression in the work. Childhood memories of locations in Birmingham and his experiences during active service during World War 1. But, a deeply religious man, Tolkien always held that The Lord of the Rings inherently reflected within the story and its symbolism his own Roman Catholic view of the world as well as various mythologies such as Celtic, Norse, Finnish and Germanic.

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