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{{disambig-more|J.R.R. Tolkien|[[J.R.R. Tolkien (disambiguation)]]}}
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{{author infobox
{{author infobox
| image=[[Image:Photograph of J.R.R. Tolkien.jpg|250px]]
| image=[[File:D.W. Luebbert - Tolkien Daydreams.jpg|275px]]
| name=J.R.R. Tolkien
| name=J.R.R. Tolkien
| born=[[3 January|January 3]], [[1892]]
| born=[[3 January]], [[1892]]
| died=[[2 September|September 2]], [[1973]]
| died=[[2 September]], [[1973]]<br>(aged 81 years)
| education=[[Oxford]]
| education=[[University of Oxford]]
| occupation=Professor
| occupation=Academic<br/>Author<br/>Philologist<br>Poet
| location=England
| location=[[Wikipedia:United Kingdom|United Kingdom]]
| website=[http://www.tolkienestate.com The Tolkien Estate]
| website=[http://www.tolkienestate.com Tolkien: The official site of the Tolkien Estate]
|}}
}}
'''John Ronald Reuel Tolkien''', CBE ([[3 January|January 3]]rd, [[1892]] – [[2 September|September 2]]nd, [[1973]]) is an author best known for ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and its sequel trilogy ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. He worked as reader and professor in English language at the University of Leeds from 1920 to 1925; as professor of [[Old English|Anglo-Saxon]] language at Oxford from 1925 to 1945; and of English language and literature from 1945 to 1959. A strongly committed Catholic, Tolkien was a close friend of [[C.S. Lewis]], and a member of the [[Inklings]], a literary discussion group to which both Lewis and [[Owen Barfield]] belonged.


In addition to ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', Tolkien's published fiction includes  ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' and other posthumous books about what he called a [[legendarium]], a fictional mythology of the remote past of Earth, called [[Arda]], and [[Middle-earth]] in particular. Most of these posthumously published works were compiled from Tolkien's notes by his son [[Christopher Tolkien|Christopher Reuel Tolkien]]. The enduring popularity and influence of Tolkien's works have established him as the "father of the modern high fantasy genre". Tolkien's other published fiction includes adaptations of stories originally told to his children and not directly related to the legendarium.
'''John Ronald Reuel Tolkien''', [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]], ([[3 January]], [[1892]] – [[2 September]], [[1973]]) was a philologist and writer, best known as the author of ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and its sequel ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. He worked as reader and professor in English language at the [[University of Leeds]] from [[1920]] to [[1925]]; as professor of [[Old English|Anglo-Saxon]] language at the [[University of Oxford]] from [[1925]] to [[1945]]; and of English language and literature from [[1945]] until his retirement in [[1959]]. Tolkien was a close friend of [[C.S. Lewis]], and a member of the [[Inklings]], a literary discussion group to which both Lewis and [[Owen Barfield]] belonged.


== Biography ==
Tolkien created a ''[[legendarium]]'', a fictional mythology about the remote past of Earth, of which [[Middle-earth]] in particular is the main stage. Parts of his legendarium are ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' and ''[[The History of Middle-earth|The History of Middle-earth series]]'' (published by his son, [[Christopher Tolkien]], posthumously) revealed Tolkien's lifelong work on that same legendarium, a process which he called "[[sub-creation]]". Tolkien's other published works include philological essays, modern adaptations of medieval literature and rendering of stories originally told to his children but not directly related to the legendarium.
=== The Tolkien Family ===
Although records are unclear, many of Tolkien's paternal ancestors were craftsmen. The Tolkien family had its roots in Saxony (present-day Germany), but had been living in England since the 18th century, becoming "quickly and intensely English (not British)" (''Letters'', 165). The surname ''Tolkien'' is anglicised from ''Tollkiehn'' (i.e. German: ''tollkühn'', "foolhardy", the etymological English translation would be "dull-keen", a literal translation of "oxymoron"). The character of Professor Rashbold in ''[[The Notion Club Papers]]'' is a pun on the name.


'''See also:''' [[J.R.R. Tolkien's Family Tree]]
==Biography==
===Family ancestry===
{{Seealso|Tolkien Family}}
Many of Tolkien's paternal ancestors were craftsmen. According to Tolkien's own understanding, the Tolkien family had its roots in Saxony (present-day Germany), but had been living in England since the 18th century, becoming "quickly and intensely English (not British)".<ref>{{L|165}}</ref> Tolkien believed that the ''Tolkien'' is the anglicised form of ''Tollkiehn'' (i.e. German: ''tollkühn'', "foolhardy", the etymological English calque would be "dull-keen", a literal translation of "oxymoron").<ref>{{L|324}}</ref> Research by linguist [[Ryszard Derdziński]] suggests that the name is of Low Prussian origin and probably means "son/descendant of Tolk".<ref>[[Ryszard Derdziński]], Z Prus do Anglii. Saga rodziny J. R. R. Tolkiena</ref> Tolkien was dismissive of this theory.<ref>{{L|349}}</ref>


=== Childhood ===
===Childhood ===
Tolkien was born on January 3, [[1892]], in Bloemfontein in the [[Orange Free State]] (now the South-African state Free State), South Africa, to [[Arthur Tolkien|Arthur Reuel Tolkien]] (1857 – 1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, ''née'' Suffield (1870 – 1904). Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel, who was born on February 17, 1894.
[[File:1984 Commemorative Plaque.JPG|thumb|left|[[Plaques and Memorials|Plaque commemorating]] J.R.R. Tolkien's birthplace in President Steyn Avenue, [[Bloemfontein]].]]
Tolkien was born on [[January 3|3 January]], [[1892]], in [[Bloemfontein]] in the [[Orange Free State]] (now the Free State province of South Africa) to [[Arthur Tolkien|Arthur Reuel Tolkien]] ([[1857]] [[1896]]), an English bank manager, and his wife [[Mabel Tolkien|Mabel, ''née'' Suffield]] ([[1870]] [[1904]]). Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, [[Hilary Tolkien|Hilary Arthur Reuel]], who was born on [[February 17|17 February]], [[1894]]. He was addressed by his family as “Ronald” as it has no history of use in the Tolkien family.<ref name=BII/>


While living in Africa he was bitten by a large 'baboon spider', and this echoes in his stories. However, Tolkien said that he did not develop a particular fear of spiders after this event, and, when he was older, recalled picking small spiders up and putting them outside.
While living in Africa he was bitten by a large 'baboon spider', and this echoes in his stories. However, Tolkien said that he did not develop a particular fear of spiders after this event, and, when he was older, recalled picking small spiders up and putting them outside.<ref name=L163/>


When he was three, Tolkien 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 of a severe brain haemorrhage before he could join them. This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took him to live with her parents in Birmingham, England. Soon after in 1896, they moved to [[Sarehole]] (now in Hall Green), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham. He enjoyed exploring [[Sarehole Mill]] and Moseley Bog and the Clent Hills and Lickey Hills, which would later inspire scenes in his books along with other Worcestershire towns and villages such as Bromsgrove, Alcester and Alvechurch and places such as his aunt's farm of Bag End, the name of which would be used in his fiction.
When he was three, Tolkien 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 of a severe brain haemorrhage before he could join them. This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took him to live with her parents in [[Birmingham]], England. Soon after in [[1896]], they moved to [[Sarehole]] (now in Hall Green), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham. He enjoyed exploring [[Sarehole Mill]] and Moseley Bog and the Clent Hills and Lickey Hills, which would later inspire scenes in his books along with other Worcestershire towns and villages such as Bromsgrove, Alcester and Alvechurch and places such as his aunt's farm of Bag End, the name of which would be used in his fiction.<ref name=BII/>


[[Image:Jrrt_1905.jpg|right|thumb|150px|Ronald and Hilary Tolkien in 1905]]
[[File:Ronald and Hilary Tolkien.jpg|right|thumb|150px|Ronald and Hilary Tolkien in 1905]]


Mabel tutored her two sons, and Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil. She taught him a great deal of botany, and she awoke in her son 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 of Latin very early. He could read by the age of four, and could write fluently soon afterwards. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham and, while a student there, helped "line the route" for the coronation parade of King George V, being posted just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. He later attended St. Philip's School and Exeter College, Oxford.
Mabel tutored her two sons, and Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil. She taught him a great deal of botany, and she awoke in her son 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 of Latin very early. He could read by the age of four, and could write fluently soon afterwards. He attended St. Philip's school and quickly outpaced his classmates so his mother pulled him out and enrolled him in [[King Edward's School]]<ref name=BII>{{B|II}}</ref>, Birmingham and, while a student there, helped "line the route" for the coronation parade of King George V, being posted just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. He later attended Exeter College, Oxford.


His mother converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900, despite vehement protests by her Baptist family. She died of diabetes in 1904, when Tolkien was twelve, at Fern Cottage, Rednal, which they were then renting. For the rest of his life, Tolkien felt that she had become a martyr for her faith; this had a profound effect on his own Catholic beliefs. Tolkien's devout faith was significant in the conversion of C.S. Lewis to Anglicanism.
His mother converted to Roman Catholicism in [[1900]], despite vehement protests by her Baptist family. She died of diabetes in [[1904]], when Tolkien was twelve, at Fern Cottage, Rednal, which they were then renting. For the rest of his life, Tolkien felt that she had become a martyr for her faith; this had a profound effect on his own Catholic beliefs.<ref name=BII/> Tolkien's devout faith was significant in the conversion of C.S. Lewis to Anglicanism.


During his subsequent orphanhood he was brought up by Father [[Francis Xavier Morgan]] of the Birmingham Oratory, in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham. He lived there in the shadow of Perrott's Folly and the Victorian tower of Edgbaston waterworks, which may have influenced the images of the dark towers within his works. Another strong influence was the romantic medievalist paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a large and world-renowned collection of works and had put it on free public display from around [[1908]].
During his subsequent orphanhood he was brought up by Father [[Francis Xavier Morgan]] of the [[Birmingham Oratory]], in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham. He lived there in the shadow of Perrott's Folly and the Victorian tower of Edgbaston waterworks, which may have influenced the images of the dark towers within his works. Another strong influence was the romantic medievalist paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a large and world-renowned collection of works and has had it put on free public display from around [[1908]].


[[image:Jrrt_1911.jpg|left|thumb|150px|J.R.R. Tolkien in 1911]]
[[File:J.R.R. Tolkien - 1911.jpg|left|thumb|150px|J.R.R. Tolkien in 1911]]


=== Youth ===
===Youth===
Tolkien met and fell in love with [[Edith Tolkien|Edith Mary Bratt]], three years his senior, at the age of sixteen. Father Francis forbade him from meeting, talking, or even corresponding with her until he was twenty-one. He obeyed this prohibition to the letter.
Tolkien met and fell in love with [[Edith Tolkien|Edith Mary Bratt]], three years his senior, at the age of sixteen. Father Francis forbade him from meeting, talking, or even corresponding with her until he was twenty-one. He obeyed this prohibition to the letter.<ref>{{L|43}}</ref>


In 1911, while they were at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Tolkien and three friends, [[Robert Gilson]], [[Geoffrey Bache Smith]] and [[Christopher Wiseman]], formed a semi-secret society which they called "the [[T.C.B.S.]]", the initials standing for "Tea Club and Barrovian Society", alluding to their fondness of drinking tea in Barrow's Stores near the school and, illegally, in the school library. 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 to writing poetry.
In [[1911]], while they were at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Tolkien and three friends, [[Robert Gilson]], [[Geoffrey Bache Smith]] and [[Christopher Wiseman]], formed a semi-secret society which they called "the [[T.C.B.S.]]", the initials standing for "Tea Club and Barrovian Society", alluding to their fondness of drinking tea in Barrow's Stores near the school and, illegally, in the school library. After leaving school, the members stayed in touch, and on [[25 December]], [[1914]], they held a "Council" in London, at Wiseman's home. For Tolkien, the result of this meeting was a strong dedication to writing poetry.


In the summer of 1911, Tolkien went on holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollects vividly in a 1968 letter (''Letters'', no. 306), noting that Bilbo's journey across the Misty Mountains ("including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods") is directly based on his adventures as their party of twelve hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, and on to camp in the moraines beyond Mürren. Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembers his regret at leaving the view of the eternal snows of Jungfrau and Silberhorn ("the Silvertine ([[Celebdil]]) of my dreams"). They went across the Kleine Scheidegg on to Grindelwald and across the Grosse Scheidegg to Meiringen. They continued across the Grimsel Pass and through the upper Valais to Brig, and on to the Aletsch glacier and Zermatt.
In the summer of 1911, Tolkien went on holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollects vividly in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo's journey across the [[Misty Mountains]] ("including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods") is directly based on his adventures as their party of twelve hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, and on to camp in the moraines beyond Mürren. Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembers his regret at leaving the view of the eternal snows of Jungfrau and Silberhorn ("the Silvertine ([[Celebdil]]) of my dreams"). They went across the Kleine Scheidegg on to Grindelwald and across the Grosse Scheidegg to Meiringen. They continued across the Grimsel Pass and through the upper Valais to Brig, and on to the Aletsch glacier and Zermatt.<ref>{{L|306}}</ref>


[[image:Tolkien_1916.jpg|right|thumb|150px|Tolkien in 1916, wearing his British Army uniform in a photograph from the middle years of WW1]]
[[File:Tolkien - 1916 (colorized).jpg|right|thumb|Tolkien in 1916, wearing his British Army uniform in a photograph from the middle years of WWI]]


On the evening of his twenty-first birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith a declaration of his love and asked her to marry him. She replied saying that she was already engaged, but had done so because she had believed Tolkien had forgotten her. The two met up and beneath a railway viaduct renewed their love, with Edith returning her ring and choosing to marry Tolkien instead. A condition of their engagement was that she was to convert to Catholicism for him. They were engaged in Birmingham, in January [[1913]], and married in Warwick, England, on [[22 March|March 22]], [[1916]].
On the evening of his twenty-first birthday ([[1913]]), Tolkien wrote to Edith a declaration of his love and asked her to marry him. She replied saying that she was already engaged, but had done so because she had believed Tolkien had forgotten her. The two met up and beneath a railway viaduct renewed their love, with Edith returning her ring and choosing to marry Tolkien instead. A condition of their engagement was that she was to convert to Catholicism for him. They were engaged in Birmingham, in January [[1913]].


With his childhood love of landscape, he visited Cornwall in 1914 and he was said to be deeply impressed by the singular Cornish coastline and sea. After graduating from the University of Oxford (Exeter College, Oxford) with a first-class degree in English language in 1915, Tolkien joined the British Army effort in [[World War I]] and served as a second lieutenant in the eleventh battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. His battalion was moved to France in 1916, where Tolkien served as a communications officer during the Battle of the Somme, until he came down with trench fever on October 27, and was moved back to England on November 8. Many of his fellow servicemen, as well as many of his closest friends, were killed in the war. During his recovery in a cottage in Great Haywood, Staffordshire, England, he began to work on what he called ''[[The Book of Lost Tales Part 1|The Book of Lost Tales]]'', beginning with ''[[The Fall of Gondolin]]''. Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps, and was promoted to lieutenant. When he was stationed at Kingston upon Hull, one day he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and Edith began to dance for him in a thick grove of hemlock. This incident inspired the account of the meeting of [[Beren]] and [[Lúthien]], and Tolkien often referred to Edith as his Lúthien.
With his childhood love of landscape, he visited Cornwall in [[1914]] and he was said to be deeply impressed by the singular Cornish coastline and sea.  


=== Oxford ===
By late 1914, his final year at the [[University of Oxford]], he joined the Officer's Training Corps.<ref>{{L|1}}</ref> After his graduation (Exeter College, [[Oxford]]) with a first-class degree in English language in [[1915]], Tolkien joined the British Army effort in [[World War I]].
Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was at the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (among others, he initiated the entries "wasp" and "walrus"). In 1920 he took up a post as Reader in English language at the University of Leeds, and in 1924 was made a professor there, but in 1925 he returned to Oxford as a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College.
In late '15 he received military training at Rugeley Camp in Staffordshire<ref>{{L|3}}</ref> and served as a second lieutenant in the eleventh battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers.  


Tolkien and Edith had four children: [[John Tolkien|John Francis Reuel]] ([[17 November|November 17]], [[1917]] - [[22 January|January 22]], [[2003]]), [[Michael Tolkien|Michael Hilary Reuel]] ([[22 October|October 22]], [[1920]] - [[27 February|February 27]],[[1984]]), [[Christopher Tolkien|Christopher John Reuel]] ([[21 November|November 21]], [[1924]]) and [[Priscilla Tolkien|Priscilla Anne Reuel]] ([[1929]]). Tolkien assisted Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the unearthing of a Roman Asclepieion at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, in [[1928]].  During his time at Pembroke, Tolkien wrote ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and the first two volumes of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. Of Tolkien's academic publications, the 1936 lecture "[[Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics]]" had a lasting influence on [[Beowulf]] research.
Tolkien married Edith in Warwick, England, on [[22 March]], [[1916]] before leaving for the War. His battalion was moved to France in [[1916]], where Tolkien served as a communications officer during the Battle of the Somme, until he came down with trench fever on [[October 27|27 October]], and was moved back to England on [[November 8|8 November]]. Many of his fellow servicemen, as well as many of his closest friends, were killed in the war. During his recovery in a cottage in [[Great Haywood]], Staffordshire, England, he began to work on what he called ''[[The Book of Lost Tales]]'', beginning with ''[[The Fall of Gondolin (chapter)|The Fall of Gondolin]]''. Throughout [[1917]] and [[1918]] his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps, and was promoted to lieutenant. When he was stationed at Thirtle Bridge, East Yorkshire, one day he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and Edith began to dance for him in a clearing thick with hemlock plants in bloom. This incident inspired the account of the meeting of [[Beren]] and [[Lúthien]],<ref>{{webcite|author=[[Bill Cater]]|articleurl=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4726863/We-talked-of-love-death-and-fairy-tales.html|articlename=We talked of love, death and fairy tales|dated=4 December 2001|website=|accessed=13 January 2024}}</ref> and Tolkien considered Edith his Lúthien.<ref>{{L|340}}</ref>


In 1945, he moved to Merton College, Oxford, becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959.  Tolkien completed ''The Lord of the Rings'' in 1948, close to a decade after the first sketches. During the 1950s, Tolkien spent many of his long academic holidays at the home of his son John Francis in Stoke-on-Trent.
Tolkien and Edith had four children: [[John Tolkien|John Francis Reuel]] ([[16 November]], [[1917]] - [[22 January]], [[2003]]), [[Michael Tolkien|Michael Hilary Reuel]] ([[22 October]], [[1920]] - [[27 February]], [[1984]]), [[Christopher Tolkien|Christopher John Reuel]] ([[21 November]], [[1924]] - [[16 January]], [[2020]]) and [[Priscilla Tolkien|Priscilla Anne Reuel]] ([[18 June]], [[1929]] - [[28 February]], [[2022]]).
Tolkien had an intense dislike for the side effects of industrialization, which he considered a devouring of the English countryside. For most of his adult life he eschewed automobiles, preferring to ride a bicycle. This attitude is perceptible from some parts of his work, such as the forced industrialisation of The Shire in ''The Lord of the Rings''.


[[Image:Jrrt_1972_tree.jpg|thumb|180px|The last known photograph of Tolkien, taken 9 August 1973, next to one of his favourite trees (a ''Pinus nigra'') in the Botanic Garden, Oxford]]
===Leeds and Oxford===
Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was at the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', working on words starting with the letter W.<ref>Peter M. Gilliver, At the Wordface: J.R.R. Tolkien's Work on the Oxford English Dictionary, [https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol21/iss2/ Mythlore, volume 21, issue 2]</ref> He later said of that "I learned more in those two years than in any other equal period of my life".<ref name=Interlude/> In [[1920]] he took up a post as Reader in English language at the [[University of Leeds]],<ref name="L7">{{L|7}}</ref> and in [[1924]] was made a professor there.<ref name="Interlude">{{B|III}}, "Oxford Interlude"</ref> The start was rough: though Gordon found Tolkien a room in Leeds,<ref>{{L|46}}</ref> Edith and young John still lived in [[Oxford]]. In weekends, Tolkien would go to his family - now expanded with the birth of Michael. Not until [[1921]] did Tolkien get full housing for his family, first at [[5 Holly Bank]]<ref name="Chronology1921">{{CG|C}}, "1921"</ref> and then at [[11 St. Mark's Terrace]].<ref name="Venture">[[Humphrey Carpenter]], ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography]]'', "Northern venture"</ref> They later moved to [[2 Darnley Road]].


[[W.H. Auden]] was a frequent correspondent and long-time friend  of Tolkien's, initiated by Auden's fascination with ''The Lord of the Rings'':  Auden was among the most prominent early critics to praise the work. Tolkien wrote in a 1971 letter,
Since [[1920]], Tolkien dedicated his time, even vacations, to finding extra work to supplement his family's income, especially for doctor bills<ref group="note">[[Christopher Tolkien]] suffered from a heart ailment.</ref> and educate his children. He "stole" some free time for himself and his personal hobby of writing his own mythology.<ref name="l17" />
{{quote|I am [...] very deeply in Auden's debt in recent years. His support of me and interest in my work has been one of my chief encouragements. He gave me very good reviews, notices and letters from the beginning when it was by no means a popular thing to do.  He was, in fact, sneered at for it.|''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', #327}}


=== Retirement and Old Age ===
W. A. Craigie resigned from the post of [[Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon]] at the Oxford English School, and Tolkien wrote a letter expressing his desire to return there<ref name="L7" /> which he did in [[1925]].
During his life in retirement, from 1959 up to his death in 1973, Tolkien  increasingly turned into a figure of public attention and literary fame. The sale of his books was so profitable that Tolkien regretted he had not taken early retirement. While at first he wrote enthusiastic answers to reader inquiries, he became more and more suspicious of emerging [[Tolkien fandom]], especially among the hippy movement in the USA. Already in 1944, he made a somewhat sarcastic comment about a fan letter by a twelve-year-old American reader ("It's nice to find that little American boys do really still say 'Gee Whiz'.", ''Letters'' no. 87). In a 1972 letter he deplores having become a cult-figure, but admits that
{{quote|even the nose of a very modest idol (younger than [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu-Bu_and_Sheemish Chu-Bu and not much older than Sheemish]) cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!|''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', #336}}.  


Fan attention became so intense that Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory, and eventually he and Edith moved to Bournemouth at the south coast. Tolkien was awarded a CBE ("Commander of the British Empire") by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on March 28, 1972.
Tolkien assisted Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the unearthing of a Roman Asclepieion at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, in [[1928]]. During his time at Pembroke, Tolkien wrote ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and the first two volumes of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''.
===''The Hobbit''===
It was during his time as Professor of [[Old English|Anglo-Saxon]] at [[Pembroke College]], in the late 1920s, that he semi-randomly scribbled the words "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit" on the back of a School Certificate paper that he was marking. These words evolved into a story like the ones he was making up for his children. He did not go any further than that at the time, although in the following years he drew up [[Thrór's map]].<ref name="L163">{{L|163}}</ref>


[[Image:Tolkiengrave.jpg|thumb|The grave of J.R.R. and Edith Tolkien]]
The tale itself he wrote in the early 1930s. It was mostly enjoyed by his eldest son [[John Tolkien|John]] (13) than the younger ones. His peers at Oxford also "forced" him to lend copies to read.<ref name="l15">{{L|15}}</ref> Eventually he lent it to the Reverend Mother Superior of Cherwell Edge and to his former pupil [[Elaine Griffiths]] who was staying in the Cherwell Edge girl's hostel, and it was seen by her student, Susan Dagnall, who worked in [[Allen and Unwin]]. It was the 10-year old son of Sir [[Stanley Unwin]], [[Rayner Unwin|Rayner]], who wrote such an enthusiastic review of the book.<ref name=L294>{{L|294}}</ref>
Edith Tolkien died on [[November 29]], [[1971]], at the age of eighty-two, and Tolkien had the name Lúthien
 
engraved on the stone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. When Tolkien died 21 months later of pneumonia on [[2 September|September 2]], [[1973]], at the age of 81, he was buried in the same grave, with Beren added to his name, so that the engraving now reads:  
The [[1936]] lecture "[[Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics]]" had a lasting influence on ''[[Beowulf (poem)|Beowulf]]'' research.<ref>Patrick Ringwalk, ''The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian''</ref>
 
By [[January]] of [[1937]] Tolkien was corresponding with Allen and Unwin (who also showed interest in ''[[Mr. Bliss]]'').<ref>{{L|9}}</ref> Around the time ''The Hobbit'' was published ([[1937]]) Tolkien suffered from an ailment and had to use crutches, the only time he was free from examining work.<ref name="l105">{{L|105}}</ref>
 
===''Lord of the Rings''===
{{seealso|The Lord of the Rings#Writing process}}
The success of ''The Hobbit'' and a request for its sequel, was an opportunity to combine his personal desire for writing, and financial needs, and agreed on writing a sequel.<ref name="l17">{{L|17}}</ref>
 
In the turn of [[1939]], and in the midst of writing the ''Lord of the Rings'', Tolkien faced financial stress and was obliged to do exams and lectures: his son, Michael was preparing for university, and Christopher, being home-schooled for health reasons, wanted to go to school.<ref name=L35/> In the summer of that year, while gardening, Tolkien fell and suffered a concussion which required stitches; he was unwell for some time<ref name="rc">{{HM|RC}}</ref>{{rp|p. 21}} and this, along with his fatigue, worries, obligations, Edith's illness, his loss of his chief assistant and understudy, prevented him from continuing his writing, including a [[Beowulf and the Finnsburg Fragment|foreword to ''Beowulf'']] as had promised.<ref name=L35/> At the outbreak of WWII, his academic duties increased.<ref>{{FR|Foreword}}</ref> Juggling between work, "Civil Defence" and writing in intervals, he doubted that, because of the War, completing the book had any use.<ref>{{L|47}}</ref> Failing to progress during Christmas vacations, he resumed only [[1944|two years later]]. It was the enthusiasm of his friends and Christopher (to whom he was sending copies by mail to South Africa) who encouraged him to continue.<ref name="rc" />{{rp|p. 25}}
 
In [[1945]], he moved to [[Merton College]], Oxford, becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, in which post he remained until his retirement in [[1959]].
In [[1946]] he faced fatigue from academic work and an illness, and although he recovered, and was free from examining work, he had to deal with a "mountain of neglects".<ref name="l105" />
 
Tolkien spent the late summer (August-September) of [[1948]], at the home of Michael at Payables Farm, Woodcote. As Michael and his family were on holidays, Tolkien found the time and quiet he needed to finish ''Lord of the Rings'', close to a decade after the first sketches.<ref name="rc" />{{rp|p. 27}}
 
After a disagreement with [[Allen and Unwin]] concerning "The Silmarillion", and failing to reach an agreement with [[Collins]], he settled the dispute with the Unwins. He reported to [[Rayner Unwin]] that he had been unwell (having recovered from "a terrible bout" of fibrositis and neuritis of the arm) burdened and downhearted. In the prospect of a nearing retirement of poverty, during which he would work as an examiner to survive, and the rising paper costs, he had modified his views ("Better something than nothing!").<ref>{{L|133}}</ref> Tolkien readily agreed to the 'profit-sharing' arrangement, where Tolkien would not receive an advance or royalties until the books had broken even.<ref>{{HM|RC}}, p. 32</ref> Between [[1953]] and [[1955]] Tolkien worked closely with Allen & Unwin on production of ''The Lord of the Rings'', agreeing on the division of volumes, their titles, correcting proofs that arrived at intervals, complete and correct artwork, the maps and the dust-jacket designs.<ref name="rc" />{{rp|p. 34}}
===Later life and recognition===
During the 1950s, Tolkien spent many of his long academic holidays at the home of his son John Francis in Stoke-on-Trent.
 
In [[1959]] Tolkien went to compulsory retirement, which he found "both distressing, and extremely laborious", especially with the less than desirable pension.<ref>'''J.R.R. Tolkien'''; [[Letter to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (December 1959)]]</ref> For him, [[1963]] was a "dreadful year", including the death of C.S. Lewis ([[22 November]]), an illness that prevented Tolkien and Edith from celebrating Christmas, and after that, [[Faith Faulconbridge]] leaving Christopher; Tolkien expressed "fear they have left their allegiance to our Mother [the Church]".<ref>'''J.R.R. Tolkien'''; [[Letter to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (20–26 January 1964)]]</ref> In the 1960s he complained about the effects of old age, and other difficulties and anxieties, some of which were caused by his own family.<ref>'''J.R.R. Tolkien'''; [[Letters to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (unknown date)]]</ref>
 
By the time of his retirement, Tolkien increasingly turned into a figure of public attention and literary fame. The sale of his books was so profitable that Tolkien regretted he had not taken early retirement. While at first he wrote enthusiastic answers to reader inquiries, he became more and more suspicious of emerging [[Tolkien fandom]], especially among the hippie movement in the USA.
 
Fan attention became so intense that, with [[Joy Hill]]'s suggestion,<ref>{{L|287}}</ref> Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory,{{fact}} and eventually he and Edith moved to [[Woodridings]] in Branksome, Poole near [[Bournemouth]] to escape his fame in [[Oxford]].<ref name="TL838" /> In June [[1968]], while preparing to move house, Tolkien fell down a set of stairs and had to stay in an [[Oxford]] hospital, leaving behind his obligations. He was expected to use crutches for all summer.<ref>{{L|305}}</ref> The couple lived in Poole until Edith's death in [[November]] [[1971]].<ref name="TL838">{{webcite|author=Pieter Collier|articleurl=http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/838-Own_a_Piece_of_Tolkien_History.php|articlename=Here is your chance to own a piece of Tolkien history|dated=9 July 2008|website=[[TolkienLibrary.com]]|accessed=}}</ref> The widowed professor moved back to Oxford, 21 Merton Street in March 1972.<ref>{{webcite|author=Rodney Legg|articleurl=http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2009/11/tolkien-in-bournemouth-and-dorset/|articlename=Tolkien in Bournemouth and Dorset|dated=November 2009|website=Dorset Life|accessed=}}</ref><ref>{{L|333}}</ref>
 
[[W.H. Auden]] was a frequent correspondent and long-time friend of Tolkien's, initiated by Auden's fascination with ''The Lord of the Rings'': Auden was among the most prominent early critics to praise the work. Tolkien wrote in a 1971 letter,{{blockquote|I am [...] very deeply in Auden's debt in recent years.  His support of me and interest in my work has been one of my chief encouragements.  He gave me very good reviews, notices and letters from the beginning when it was by no means a popular thing to do.  He was, in fact, sneered at for it.|[[Letter 327]]}}
[[File:Jrrt_1972_tree.jpg|thumb|180px|The last known photograph of Tolkien, taken 9 August 1973, next to one of his favourite trees (a ''Pinus nigra'') in the Botanic Garden, Oxford]]
 
In a [[1972]] letter he deplores having become a cult-figure, but admits that
{{Blockquote|even the nose of a very modest idol (younger than [[Wikipedia:Chu-Bu_and_Sheemish|Chu-Bu and not much older than Sheemish]]) cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!|[[Letter 336]]}}
 
Tolkien was awarded a [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]] ("Commander of the British Empire") by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on [[March 28|28 March]], 1972.
 
[[File:Tolkiengrave.jpg|thumb|The grave of J.R.R. and Edith Tolkien]]
Edith Tolkien died on [[29 November|28 November]], [[1971]], at the age of eighty-two, and Tolkien had the name ''Lúthien'' engraved on the stone at [[Wolvercote Cemetery]], Oxford. When Tolkien died 21 months later of pneumonia on [[2 September]], [[1973]], at the age of 81, he was buried in the same grave, with ''Beren'' added to his name, so that the engraving now reads:  
:''Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889 – 1971''
:''Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889 – 1971''
:''John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892 – 1973''
:''John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892 – 1973''


Posthumously named after Tolkien are the Tolkien Road in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and the asteroid [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2675_Tolkien 2675 Tolkien]. Tolkien Way in Stoke-On-Trent is named after J.R.R.'s son Father John Francis Tolkien, who used to be the priest in charge at the nearby Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Angels and St. Peter in Chains.
Posthumously named after Tolkien are the Tolkien Road in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and the asteroid [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2675_Tolkien 2675 Tolkien]. Tolkien Way in Stoke-On-Trent is named after J.R.R.'s son [[John Tolkien|Father John Francis Tolkien]], who used to be the priest in charge at the nearby Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Angels and St. Peter in Chains.
 
==Appearance==
The early images of J.R.R. Tolkien in school and university show a serious young man, average height, slender, clean-shaven, and with his hair parted in the middle.
 
At school he was considered too light for the rugby team, and in order to join he tried to make it up with ferocity during the game, and eventually he was accepted.<ref>{{L|16}}</ref>
 
By [[1916]] Tolkien had joined the army he had changed to a more conventional haircut, as well as a moustache for a short period of time.
 
[[Richard Plotz]], who visited Tolkien in 1966, described him as
{{Blockquote|...a medium-sized man ... [who] looks much younger than his seventy-four years. Like one of his creations, the Hobbits, he is a bit fat in the stomach ...|"J.R.R. Tolkien Talks about the Discovery of Middle-earth, the Origins of Elvish", ''[[Seventeen]]'' (January [[1967]]), p. 92}}
 
In a letter on [[8 February]], [[1967]], to inter­viewers Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, Tolkien stated that he was not "tall, or strongly built. I now measure 5 ft 8 1/2, and am slightly built, with notably small hands. For most of my life I have been very thin and underweight. Since my early sixties I have become 'tubby'. Not unusual in men who took their exercise in games and swimming, when opportunities for these things cease".<ref name=L294/> In "[[The Man Who Understands Hobbits]]" (''[[Daily Telegraph Magazine]]'', [[22 March]] [[1968]]), the Plimmers also noted that Tolkien had 'grey eyes, firm tanned skin, silvery hair and quick decisive speech'.<ref>{{webcite|author=Charlotte and Denis Plimmer|articleurl=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/04/19/jrr-tolkien-film-my-books-its-easier-to-film-the-odyssey/|articlename=JRR Tolkien: 'Film my books? It's easier to film The Odyssey'|dated=19 April 2016|website=Telegraph|accessed=26 January 2020}}</ref>
 
During Tolkien's time at King Edward's School he was noted for his choice in coloured socks.<ref>{{L|58}}</ref>
 
[[Clyde S. Kilby]], who spent some time with Tolkien in the summer of [[1966]], noted that he "was always neatly dressed from necktie to shoes. One of his favourite suits was a herringbone with which he wore a green corduroy vest [waistcoat]. Always there was a vest, and nearly always a sport coat. He did not mind wearing a very broad necktie which in those days was out of style".<ref>[[Clyde S. Kilby]], ''[[Tolkien and the Silmarillion]]'' ([[1976]]), p. 24</ref>
 
Tolkien had a particular liking for decorative waistcoats: he told one correspondent that he had "one or two choice embroidered speci­mens, which I sometimes wear when required to make a speech, as I find they so fascinate the eyes of the audience that they do not notice if my dentures become a little loose with excitements of rhetoric"<ref>'''J.R.R. Tolkien'''; [[Letter to Nancy Smith (Christmas 1963)]]</ref>
 
Interviewers have noted that Tolkien almost clung to his smoking pipe, cradling it in his hand, or speaking with it in his mouth, sometimes making him difficult to understand. One of these, Richard Plotz, wrote that Tolkien "took out a pipe as he entered his study, and all during the interview he held it clenched in his teeth, lighting and relighting it, talking through it; he never removed it from his mouth for more than five seconds" ('J.R.R. Tolkien Talks...', p. 92).
 
==Character, personality, views==
{{seealso|Christianity}}
Tolkien attempted to describe himself for [[Deborah Webster]]:
{{quote|I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I [[smoking|smoke]] a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of [[mushrooms]] (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much. I love Wales (what is left of it, when mines, and the even more ghastly sea-side reasons, have done their worst), and especially the [[Welsh]] language. But I have not in fact been in W. for a long time (except for crossing it on the way to Ireland). I go frequently to Ireland (Eire: Southern Ireland) being fond of it and of (most of) its people; but the Irish language I find wholly unattractive.|[[Letter 213]]}}
 
Tolkien had an intense dislike for the side effects of industrialization, which he considered a devouring of the English countryside. For most of his adult life he eschewed automobiles, preferring to ride a bicycle. This attitude is perceptible in some parts of his work, such as the forced industrialization of [[The Shire]] in ''The Lord of the Rings''.
 
In retrospect, Tolkien claimed that from the age of seven or eight, two interests dominated his subsequent perception of everything: [[elves]] and [[orcs]].<ref group="note">It is not clear what he meant by this; possibly he understood the world as a struggle between people and elements who create beauty and do good; and those people or forces who defile and destroy nature or the "elves's" works.</ref> Throughout his life he collected every detail related to it, which, along with the "[[Atlantis]] complex" dream, was the embryo of his [[Legendarium]].<ref>'''J.R.R. Tolkien'''; [[Letter to Maria Mroczkowska]]</ref>
 
Jesting on the name of [[Puffin Books]], Tolkien said he disliked penguins and puffins for eating other birds's eggs.<ref>{{L|225}}</ref> He considered that Siamese [[cats]] "belong to the fauna of Mordor"<ref>{{L|219}}</ref> He also disliked [[spiders]]<ref>'''J.R.R. Tolkien'''; [[Letter to Richard Lupoff]]</ref> although not that much as to kill them. He refused that this has anything to do with being bitten by a tarantula as a toddler.<ref name=L163/>


== Appearance ==
Tolkien boasted of himself to be "a world-class [[wiktionary:niggler|niggler]]".<ref>{{HM|RC}}, p. 43, quoting a letter of [[Christopher Tolkien]]</ref> He wrote ''The Lord of the Rings'' laboriously, preoccupied with detail, consistency and careful consideration of every word.<ref>{{L|199}}</ref><ref name=L35>{{L|35}}</ref>
The early images of J.R.R. Tolkien in school and university show a serious young man, average height, slender, clean-shaven, and with his hair parted in the middle. By [[1916]] and Tolkien had joined the army he had changed to a more conventional haircut, as well as a mustache for a short period of time. [[Richard Plotz]], who visited Tolkien in 1966, described him as
{{quote|...a medium-sized man ... [who] looks much younger than his seventy-four years. Like one of his creations, the Hobbits, he is a bit fat in the stomach ...|"J.R.R. Tolkien Talks about the Discovery of Middle-earth, the Origins of Elvish", Seventeen, January [[1967]], pg. 92)}}


In a letter on February 8th, [[1967]], to inter­viewers Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, Tolkien stated that he was not "tall, or strongly built. I now measure 5 ft 8 1/2, and am slightly built, with notably small hands. For most of my life I have been very thin and underweight. Since my early sixties I have become 'tubby'. Not unusual in men who took their exercise in games and swimming, when opportunities for these things cease" (''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', pg. 373).
Tolkien was insecure and lacked confidence in his own work, even when he was assured that it had value for others.<ref>{{L|282}}</ref> Father [[Robert Murray]], Tolkien's personal friend, considered the professor "a complex and depressed man" and his work "projects his very depressed view of the universe".<ref>[[Richard C. West]], "A Letter from Father Murray", [[Tolkien Studies 16]], pp. 135-6</ref> Some analysts consider Tolkien's personality as an Assertive Mediator (INFP).<ref{{webcite|articleurl=https://www.16personalities.com/articles/jrr-tolkien-creator-of-words-and-worlds-the-lord-of-the-rings-personality-series|articlename=J.R.R. Tolkien: Creator of Words and Worlds (The Lord of the Rings Personality Series)|website=[http://16personalities.com 16personalities]|author=Alycia|accessed=14 January 2022}}</ref>


In "The Man Who Understands Hobbits" [Daily Telegraph Magazine, 22 March 1968) the Plimmers noted that Tolkien had 'grey eyes, firm tanned skin, silvery hair and quick decisive speech' (pg. 31).
Politically, Tolkien was a peaceful anarchist apolitical stance.<ref>[[Patrick Curry]], ''Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity'', p. 47</ref>
{{stub}}


During Tolkien's time at [[King Edward's School]] he was noted for his choice in colored socks.
==Writing==
[[File:J.R.R. Tolkien - TLOTR covers original design.jpg|thumb|[[The Lord of the Rings/Original dust-jacket designs|Cover design]] for the three volumes of ''The Lord of the Rings'' by J.R.R. Tolkien]]


[[Clyde S. Kilby]], who spent some time with Tolkien in the summer of 1966, noted that he "was always neatly dressed from necktie to shoes. One of his favorite suits was a herringbone with which he wore a green corduroy vest [waistcoat]. Always there was a vest, and nearly always a sport coat. He did not mind wearing a very broad necktie which in those days was out of style" (Tolkien and the Silmarillion ([[1976]]), pg. 24).  
Beginning with ''[[The Book of Lost Tales]]'', written while recuperating from illness during World War I, Tolkien devised several themes that were reused in successive drafts of his legendarium. The two most prominent stories, the tales of [[Beren and Lúthien]] and that of [[Túrin]], were carried forward into long narrative poems (published in ''[[The Lays of Beleriand]]''). Tolkien wrote a brief summary of the mythology these poems were intended to represent, and that summary eventually evolved into "[[The Silmarillion]]", an epic history that Tolkien started three times but never published. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series ''[[The History of Middle-earth]]''. From around [[1936]], he began to extend this framework to include the tale of ''[[The Fall of Númenor (chapter)|The Fall of Númenor]]'', which was inspired by the legend of [[Atlantis]].


Tolkien had a particular liking for decorative waistcoats: he told one correspondent that he had "one or two choice embroidered speci­mens, which I sometimes wear when required to make a speech, as I find they so fascinate the eyes of the audience that they do not notice if my dentures become a little loose with excitements of rhetoric" (from a letter to Nancy Smith, 25 December [[1963]], Special Collections and University Archives, John P. Raynor, S.J., Library, Marquette University).
Tolkien was strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon literature, Germanic and [[Norse mythology|Norse mythologies]], Finnish mythology, the Bible, and Greek mythology. The works most often cited as sources for Tolkien's stories include ''[[Beowulf (poem)|Beowulf]]'', the ''[[Kalevala]]'', the ''[[Poetic Edda]]'', the ''[[Volsunga saga]]'' and the ''[[Hervarar saga]]''. Tolkien himself acknowledged Homer, Oedipus, and the ''Kalevala'' as influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas. His borrowings also came from numerous [[Middle English]] works and poems. A major philosophical influence on his writing is King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of ''Boethius''' ''Consolation of Philosophy'' known as the ''Lays of Boethius''. Characters in ''The Lord of the Rings'', such as [[Frodo]], [[Treebeard]] and [[Elrond]] make noticeably Boethian remarks.


Interviewers have noted that Tolkien almost clung to his smoking pipe, cradling it in his hand, or speaking with it in his mouth, sometimes making him difficult to understand. One of these, Richard Plotz, wrote that Tolkien "took out a pipe as he entered his study, and all during the interview he held it clenched in his teeth, lighting and relighting it, talking through it; he never removed it from his mouth for more than five seconds" ('J.R.R. Tolkien Talks...', pg. 92).
In addition to his [[Mythopoeia|mythological compositions]], Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children. He wrote annual Christmas letters from Father Christmas for them, building up a series of short stories (later compiled and published as ''[[The Father Christmas Letters]]'').<ref>{{HM|LFC}}</ref> Other stories included ''[[Mr. Bliss]]'', ''[[Roverandom]]'',<ref>{{HM|R}}</ref> ''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]'',<ref>{{HM|SWM}}</ref>''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]''<ref>[[J.R.R. Tolkien]], ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]''</ref> and ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]''. ''Roverandom'' and ''Smith of Wootton Major'', like ''The Hobbit'', borrowed ideas from his legendarium. ''Leaf by Niggle'' appears to be an autobiographical work, where a "very small man", [[Niggle]], keeps painting leaves until finally he ends up with a tree.<ref>{{HM|TL}}</ref>


Tolkien never expected his fictional stories to become popular, but he was persuaded by a former student to publish a book he had written for his own children called ''The Hobbit'' in 1937. However, the book attracted adult readers as well, and it became popular enough for the publisher, [[George Allen & Unwin]], to ask Tolkien to work on a sequel.


== Writing ==
Even though he felt uninspired on the topic, this request prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic three-volume novel ''The Lord of the Rings'' (published 1954–55). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for ''The Lord of the Rings'', during which time he received the constant support of the [[Inklings]], in particular his closest friend C.S. Lewis, the author of ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]''. Both ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' are set against the background of "The Silmarillion", but in a time long after it.
[[Image:Jrrt_lotr_cover_design.jpg|thumb|350px|Cover design for the three volumes of ''The Lord of the Rings'' by J.R.R. Tolkien]]


Beginning with ''[[The Book of Lost Tales Part 1|The Book of Lost Tales]]'', written while recuperating from illness during World War I, Tolkien devised several themes that were reused in successive drafts of his legendarium.  The two most prominent stories, the tales of Beren and Lúthien  and that of [[Túrin]], were carried forward into long narrative poems (published in ''[[The Lays of Beleriand]]''). Tolkien wrote a brief summary of the mythology these poems were intended to represent, and that summary eventually evolved into ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', an epic history that Tolkien started three times but never published. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series ''[[The History of Middle-earth]]''. From around 1936, he began to extend this framework to include the tale of ''The Fall of [[Númenor]]'', which was inspired by the legend of [[Atlantis]].
Tolkien at first intended ''The Lord of the Rings'' as a children's tale like ''The Hobbit'', but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to ''The Hobbit'', it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immense back story of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in ''The Silmarillion'' and other volumes. Tolkien's influence weighs heavily on the fantasy genre that grew after the success of ''The Lord of the Rings''.


Tolkien was strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon literature, Germanic and Norse mythologies, Finnish mythology, the Bible, and Greek mythology.  The works most often cited as sources for Tolkien's stories include ''Beowulf'', the ''[[Kalevala]]'', the ''[[Poetic Edda]]'', the ''[[Volsunga saga]]'' and the ''[[Hervarar saga]]''<sup>1</sup>. Tolkien himself acknowledged Homer, Oedipus, and the Kalevala as influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas.  His borrowings also came from numerous Middle English works and poems. A major philosophical influence on his writing is King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of ''Boethius''' ''Consolation of Philosophy'' known as the ''Lays of Boethius''. Characters in ''The Lord of the Rings'', such as Frodo, Treebeard and Elrond make noticeably Boethian remarks.
Tolkien continued to work on the history of Middle-earth until his death. His son Christopher, with some assistance from fantasy writer [[Guy Gavriel Kay]], organised some of this material into one volume, published as ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' in [[1977]]. In [[1980]], Christopher Tolkien followed this with a collection of more fragmentary material under the title ''[[Unfinished Tales]]'', and in subsequent years he published a massive amount of background material on the creation of Middle-earth in the twelve volumes of ''[[The History of Middle-earth]]''. All these posthumous works contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative and outright contradictory accounts, since they were always a work in progress, and Tolkien only rarely settled on a definitive version for any of the stories. There is not even complete consistency to be found between ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Hobbit'', the two most closely related works, because Tolkien was never able to fully integrate all their traditions into each other. He commented in 1965, while editing ''The Hobbit'' for a third edition, that he would have preferred to completely rewrite the entire book.{{fact}}


In addition to his [[Mythopoeia|mythological compositions]], Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children. He wrote annual Christmas letters from Father Christmas for them, building up a series of short stories (later compiled and published as ''[[The Father Christmas Letters]]''). Other stories included ''[[Mr. Bliss]]'', ''[[Roverandom]]'', ''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]'', ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]'' and ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]''. ''Roverandom'' and ''Smith of Wootton Major'', like ''The Hobbit'', borrowed ideas from his legendarium. ''Leaf by Niggle'' appears to be an autobiographical work, where a "very small man", Niggle, keeps painting leaves until finally he ends up with a tree.
The John P. Raynor, S.J., Library at [[Marquette University]] in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, preserves many of Tolkien's original manuscripts, notes and letters; other original material survives at Oxford's [[Bodleian Library]]. Marquette has the manuscripts and proofs of ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Hobbit'', and other manuscripts, including ''Farmer Giles of Ham'', while the Bodleian holds "The Silmarillion" papers and Tolkien's academic work.


Tolkien never expected his fictional stories to become popular, but he was persuaded by a former student to publish a book he had written for his own children called ''The Hobbit'' in 1937. However, the book attracted adult readers as well, and it became popular enough for the publisher, George Allen & Unwin, to ask Tolkien to work on a sequel.
''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 twentieth century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was found to be the "Nation's Best-loved Book".<ref>{{webcite|author=|articleurl=https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml|articlename=The Big Read|dated=|website=[https://www.bbc.com/?scrlybrkr=b21a79f2 BBC]|accessed=30 January 2024}}</ref> Australians voted ''The Lord of the Rings'' "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002 Tolkien was voted the ninety-second "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC,<ref>{{webcite|author=|articleurl=https://www.geni.com/projects/100-Greatest-Britons-BBC-Poll-2002/15375|articlename=100 Greatest Britons (BBC Poll, 2002)|dated=|website=|accessed=30 January 2024}}</ref> and in 2004 he was voted thirty-fifth in the SABC3's Great South Africans,{{webcite|author=|articleurl=https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/540539|articlename=SABC3's Great South Africans|dated=|website=|accessed=30 January 2024}} the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited just to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found ''The Lord of the Rings'' (''Der Herr der Ringe'') to be their favourite work of literature.


Even though he felt uninspired on the topic, this request prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic three-volume novel ''The Lord of the Rings'' (published 1954–55). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for ''The Lord of the Rings'', during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend C.S. Lewis, the author of ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]''. Both ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' are set against the background of ''The Silmarillion'', but in a time long after it.
==Languages==
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology.  


Tolkien at first intended ''The Lord of the Rings'' as a children's tale like ''The Hobbit'', but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to ''The Hobbit'', it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immense back story of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in ''The Silmarillion'' and other volumes. Tolkien's influence weighs heavily on the fantasy genre that grew up after the success of ''The Lord of the Rings''.
His mother taught him the rudiments of [[Latin]] very early. He could read by the age of four, and could write fluently soon afterwards.  


Tolkien continued to work on the history of Middle-earth until his death. His son Christopher, with some assistance from fantasy writer [[Guy Gavriel Kay]], organised some of this material into one volume, published as ''The Silmarillion'' in 1977.  In 1980 Christopher Tolkien followed this with a collection of more fragmentary material under the title ''[[Unfinished Tales]]'', and in subsequent years he published a massive amount of background material on the creation of Middle-earth in the twelve volumes of ''[[The History of Middle-earth]]''.
In the early 1900s he was introduced to a secret "code" created by his Incledon cousins, called [[Animalic]] replacing words with animal-names. Soon after, with [[Mary Incledon|Mary]] they created [[Nevbosh]], a more sophisticated language, with Tolkien contributing to the vocabulary and influencing the spelling.<ref>{{HM|MC}}, p. 133</ref>
All these posthumous works contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative and outright contradictory accounts, since they were always a work in progress, and Tolkien only rarely settled on a definitive version for any of the stories. There is not even complete consistency to be found between ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Hobbit'', the two most closely related works, because Tolkien was never able to fully integrate all their traditions into each other. He commented in 1965, while editing ''The Hobbit'' for a third edition, that he would have preferred to completely rewrite the entire book.


The John P. Raynor, S.J., Library at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, preserves many of Tolkien's original manuscripts, notes and letters; other original material survives at Oxford's Bodleian Library. Marquette has the manuscripts and proofs of ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''The Hobbit'', and other manuscripts, including ''Farmer Giles of Ham'', while the Bodleian holds the ''Silmarillion'' papers and Tolkien's academic work.
In [[1909]] he wrote the ''[[Book of the Foxrook]]'' in a notebook, with notes in Esperanto,<ref name="Seven">[[Arden R. Smith]], [[Patrick H. Wynne|Patrick Wynne]], "Tolkien and Esperanto", in [[SEVEN 17|''SEVEN'', Volume 17]], p. 29</ref> describing ''[[Privata Kodo Skauta]]'' ("Private Scout Code").<ref>{{webcite|author=[[Arden R. Smith]]|articleurl=http://www.tolkienestate.com/en/learning/languages-and-writing-systems/writing-systems.html|articlename=Writing Systems|dated=|website=[http://www.tolkienestate.com/ tolkienestate.com]|accessed=27 December 2016}}</ref> "''consisting of a [[runes|rune]]-like phonetic alphabet and a sizable number of ideographic symbols''".<ref name="Seven" /> In the 1910s he composed [[Naffarin]], a private language,<ref>{{HM|MC}}, p. 141</ref>


''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 twentieth century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was found to be the "Nation's Best-loved Book". Australians voted ''The Lord of the Rings'' "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, ''The Lord of the Rings'' was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002 Tolkien was voted the ninety-second "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC, and in 2004 he was voted thirty-fifth in the SABC3's Great South Africans, the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited just to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK’s "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found ''The Lord of the Rings'' (''Der Herr der Ringe'') to be their favourite work of literature.
He specialised in Greek philology in college, and in 1915 graduated Exeter College with a first-class degree in English language with Old Icelandic as special subject. By the time of his military training in [[1915]] he was working on a "mad hobby": a "nonsense fairy language"<ref>{{L|4}}</ref> which would become his "elvenlatin",<ref>{{L|144}}</ref> the first seed of his legendarium.


== Languages ==
He worked for the ''[[Wikipedia:Oxford English Dictionary]]'' from 1918. In 1920, he went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty and even formed a "[[Viking Club]]". He gave courses in [[Old English]] heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory [[Germanic]] philology, [[Gothic]], Old Icelandic, and Medieval [[Welsh]]. In [[1925]], aged 33, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.<ref name=L7/> He also made an appearance at SSC Highschool.
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology. He specialised in Greek philology in college, and in 1915 graduated with Old Icelandic as special subject. He worked for the Oxford English Dictionary from 1918. In 1920, he went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old English heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory Germanic philology, [[Gothic]], Old Icelandic, and Medieval Welsh. When in 1925, aged 33, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, he boasted that his students of Germanic philology in Leeds had even formed a "Viking Club".  


Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things of racial and linguistic significance", and he entertained notions of an inherited taste of language, which he termed the "native tongue" as opposed to "cradle tongue" in his 1955 lecture ''[[English and Welsh]]'', which is crucial to his understanding of race and language. He considered west-midland Middle English his own "native tongue", and, as he wrote to W.H. Auden in 1955 (''Letters'', no. 163), "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)".
Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things of racial and linguistic significance", and he entertained notions of an inherited taste of language, which he termed the "native tongue" as opposed to "cradle tongue" in his 1955 lecture ''[[English and Welsh]]'', which is crucial to his understanding of race and language. He considered west-midland Middle English his own "native tongue", and, as he wrote to W.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)".<ref name=L163/>


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 for the construction of artificial languages. The best developed of these are [[Quenya]] and [[Sindarin]], the etymological connection between which are at the core of much of Tolkien's legendarium. Language and grammar for Tolkien was a matter of aesthetics and euphony, and Quenya in particular was designed from "phonæsthetic" considerations. It was intended as an "Elvenlatin", and was phonologically based on Latin, with ingredients from Finnish and Greek (''Letters'', no. 144). A notable addition came in late 1945 with [[Adûnaic]], a language of a "faintly Semitic flavour", connected with Tolkien's Atlantis myth, which by ''The Notion Club Papers'' ties directly into his ideas about inheritability of language, and via the "[[Second Age]]" and the [[Eärendil]] myth was grounded in the legendarium, thereby providing a link of Tolkien's 20th-century "real primary world" with the mythical past of his Middle-earth.
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 for the construction of artificial languages. The best developed of these are [[Quenya]] and [[Sindarin]], the etymological connection between which are at the core of much of Tolkien's legendarium. Language and grammar for Tolkien were a matter of aesthetics and euphony, and Quenya in particular was designed from "phonæsthetic" considerations. It was intended as an "Elvenlatin", and was phonologically based on Latin, with ingredients from Finnish and Greek.<ref>{{L|144}}</ref> A notable addition came in late 1945 with [[Adûnaic]], a language of a "faintly Semitic flavour",<ref>{{SD|2cn}}</ref> connected with Tolkien's Atlantis myth, which by ''The Notion Club Papers'' ties directly into his ideas about inheritability of language, and via the "[[Second Age]]" and the [[Eärendil]] myth was grounded in the legendarium, thereby providing a link of Tolkien's 20th-century "real primary world" with the mythical past of his Middle-earth.


Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view of auxiliary languages. In [[1930]] a congress of Esperantists were told as much by him, in his lecture ''[[A Secret Vice]]'', "Your language construction will breed a mythology", but by 1956 he concluded that "Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends" (''Letters'', no. 180).
Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view of auxiliary languages. In [[1930]] a congress of Esperantists were told as much by him, in his lecture ''[[A Secret Vice]]'', "Your language construction will breed a mythology",<ref>'''J.R.R. Tolkien'''; ''[[A Secret Vice]]''</ref> but by 1956 he concluded that "Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends".<ref>{{L|180}}</ref>


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 today commonly accept Tolkien's revival of the spellings ''dwarves'' and ''elvish'' (instead of ''dwarfs'' and ''elfish''), which had not been in use since the mid-1800s and earlier. Other terms he has coined, like legendarium and [[eucatastrophe]], are mainly used in connection with Tolkien's work.
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 today commonly accept Tolkien's revival of the spellings ''dwarves'' and ''elvish'' (instead of ''dwarfs'' and ''elfish''), which had not been in use since the mid-1800s and earlier. Other terms he has coined, like legendarium and [[eucatastrophe]], are mainly used in connection with Tolkien's work.


== Works Inspired by Tolkien ==
==Works inspired by Tolkien==
In a 1951 letter to [[Milton Waldman]], Tolkien writes about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which:
In a 1951 letter to [[Milton Waldman]], Tolkien writes about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which:
{{quote|The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.|''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', #131}}
{{Blockquote|The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.|[[Letter 131]]}}


The hands and minds of many artists have indeed been inspired by Tolkien's legends. Personally known to him were [[Pauline Baynes]] (Tolkien's favourite illustrator of ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]'' and ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]'') and [[Donald Swann]] (who set the music to ''[[The Road Goes Ever On (book)|The Road Goes Ever On]]''). Queen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_II_of_Denmark Margrethe II of Denmark] created illustrations to ''The Lord of the Rings'' in the early 1970s. She sent them to Tolkien, who was struck by the similarity to the style of his own drawings.
The hands and minds of many artists have indeed been inspired by Tolkien's legends. Personally known to him were [[Pauline Baynes]] (Tolkien's favourite illustrator of ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]'' and ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]'') and [[Donald Swann]] (who set the music to ''[[The Road Goes Ever On (book)|The Road Goes Ever On]]''). Queen [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_II_of_Denmark Margrethe II of Denmark] created illustrations for ''The Lord of the Rings'' in the early 1970s. She sent them to Tolkien, who was struck by the similarity to the style of his own drawings.


But Tolkien was not fond of all the artistic representation of his works that were produced in his lifetime, and was sometimes harshly disapproving.
But Tolkien was not fond of all the artistic representations of his works that were produced in his lifetime and was sometimes harshly disapproving.


In 1946, he rejects suggestions for illustrations by [[Horus Engels]] for the German edition of the ''Hobbit'' as ''"too Disnified"'',
In 1946, he rejected suggestions for illustrations by [[Horus Engels]] for the German edition of The ''Hobbit'' as ''"too Disnified"'',
{{quote|Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of.|''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', #107}}
{{Blockquote|Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of.|[[Letter 107]]}}


He was sceptical of the emerging [[Tolkien fandom|fandom]] in the United States, and in 1954 he returned proposals for the dust jackets of the American edition of ''The Lord of the Rings'':
He was sceptical of the emerging [[Tolkien fandom|fandom]] in the United States, and in 1954 he returned proposals for the dust jackets of the American edition of ''The Lord of the Rings'':
{{quote|Thank you for sending me the projected 'blurbs', which I return. The Americans are not as a rule at all amenable to criticism or correction; but I think their effort is so poor that I feel constrained to make some effort to improve it.|''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', #144}}
{{Blockquote|Thank you for sending me the projected 'blurbs', which I return. The Americans are not as a rule at all amenable to criticism or correction; but I think their effort is so poor that I feel constrained to make some effort to improve it.|[[Letter 144]]}}
 
And in [[1958]], in an irritated reaction to a proposed movie adaptation of ''The Lord of the Rings'' by Morton Grady Zimmerman:
{{Blockquote|I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about.|[[Letter 207]]}}


And in 1958, in an irritated reaction to a proposed movie adaptation of ''The Lord of the Rings'' by Morton Grady Zimmerman:
He went on to criticise the script scene by scene ("yet one more scene of screams and rather meaningless slashings"). But Tolkien was in principle open to the idea of a movie adaptation. He sold the film, stage and merchandise rights of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' to [[United Artists]] in 1969, while, guided by scepticism towards future productions, he forbade Disney should ever be involved:
{{quote|I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about.|''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', #207}}
{{Blockquote|It might be advisable [...] to let the Americans do what seems good to them — as long as it was possible [...] to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).|[[Letter 13]]}}


He went on to criticise the script scene by scene ("yet one more scene of screams and rather meaningless slashings"). But Tolkien was in principle open to the idea of a movie adaptation. He sold the film, stage and merchandise rights of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' to United Artists in 1968, while, guided by scepticism towards future productions, he forbade Disney should ever be involved:
United Artists never made a film, though at least [[John Boorman]] was planning to make a film in the early seventies. It would have been a live-action film, which apparently would have been much more to Tolkien's liking than an animated film. In 1976 the rights were sold to [[Saul Zaentz]], who in turn formed Tolkien Enterprises, now named [[Middle-earth Enterprises]], a division of its company, and the first movie adaptation (an animated rotoscoping film) of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' appeared only after Tolkien's death (in 1978, directed by [[Ralph Bakshi]]). The screenplay was written by the fantasy writer [[Peter S. Beagle]]. This first adaptation, however, only contained the first half of the story that is ''The Lord of the Rings''. In 1977 an animated TV production of ''[[The Hobbit (1977 film)|The Hobbit]]'' was made by [[Rankin/Bass]], and in 1980 the company produced an animated film titled ''[[The Return of the King (1980 film)|The Return of the King]]'', which covered some of the portion of ''The Lord of the Rings'' that Bakshi was unable to complete. In 2001-3 ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film series)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' was filmed in full and as a live-action film as a ''trilogy of films'' by [[Peter Jackson]]. A decade later, Jackson proceeded with ''[[The Hobbit (film series)|The Hobbit]]'', envisioned as a prequel trilogy.
{{quote|It might be advisable [...] to let the Americans do what seems good to them — as long as it was possible [...] to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).|''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', #13}}


United Artists never made a film, though at least [[John Boorman]] was planning a film in the early seventies. It would have been a live-action film, which apparently would have been much more to Tolkien's liking than an animated film.  In 1976 the rights were sold to Tolkien Enterprises, now [[Middle-earth Enterprises]], a [[Saul Zaentz]] company, and the first movie adaptation (an animated rotoscoping film) of ''[[The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' appeared only after Tolkien's death (in 1978, directed by [[Ralph Bakshi]]). The screenplay was written by the fantasy writer [[Peter S. Beagle]]. This first adaptation, however, only contained the first half of the story that is ''The Lord of the Rings''.  In 1977 an animated TV production of ''[[The Hobbit (1977 film)|The Hobbit]]'' was made by [[Rankin/Bass]], and in 1980 they produced an animated film titled ''[[The Return of the King (1980 film)|The Return of the King]]'', which covered some of the portion of ''The Lord of the Rings'' that Bakshi was unable to complete. In 2001-3 ''[[The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy|The Lord of the Rings]]'' was filmed in full and as a live-action film as a ''trilogy of films'' by [[Peter Jackson]].
In 2019 it was produced and released by [[The Walt Disney Company|Fox Searchlight Pictures]] a [[Tolkien (film)|film]] about the life of J.R.R. Tolkien in his youth, with Tolkien himself being portrayed by [[Nicholas Hoult]] and Harry Gilby.


== Bibliography ==
==Bibliography ==
''For a complete list of all of Tolkien's published writings, see [[Writings by J.R.R. Tolkien]]''
:''For a complete list of all of Tolkien's published writings, see '''[[Index:Writings by J.R.R. Tolkien|Writings by J.R.R. Tolkien]]'''.''
=== Fiction and Poetry ===
* 1936 ''[[Songs for the Philologists]]'', with [[E.V. Gordon]] et al.
* 1937 ''[[The Hobbit|The Hobbit or There and Back Again]]'', ISBN 0-618-00221-9 ([[Houghton Mifflin|HM]]).
* 1945 ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]'' (short story)
* 1945 ''[[The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun]]'', published in ''Welsh Review''
* 1949 ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]'' (medieval fable)
* 1953 ''[[The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth|The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son]]'' published with the essay ''Ofermod''
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''
** 1954 ''[[The Fellowship of the Ring]]'': being the first part of ''The Lord of the Rings'', ISBN 0-618-00222-7 (HM).
** 1954 ''[[The Two Towers]]'': being the second part of ''The Lord of the Rings'', ISBN 0-618-00223-5 (HM).
** 1955 ''[[The Return of the King]]'': being the third part of ''The Lord of the Rings'', ISBN 0-618-00224-3 (HM).
*  1962 ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]] and Other Verses from the Red Book''
* 1967 ''[[The Road Goes Ever On (book)|The Road Goes Ever On]]'', with [[Donald Swann]]
* 1964 ''[[Tree and Leaf]]'' (''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' and ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]'' in book form)
* 1966 ''[[The Tolkien Reader]]'' (''The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm's Son'', ''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'', ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]'', ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]' and ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]'')
* 1967 ''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]''


=== Academic Works ===
===Fictional and poetic works ===
* 1922 ''A Middle English Vocabulary''
* 1936 ''[[Songs for the Philologists]]'', with [[E.V. Gordon]] (only very few copies now exist)
* 1924 ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (edition)|Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]'' (with [[E.V. Gordon]])
*1937 ''[[The Hobbit]], or There and Back Again''
* 1925 ''Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography''
*1945 ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]''
* 1925 ''[[The Devil's Coach-Horses]]''
*1945 ''[[The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun]]'' (published in ''Welsh Review'')
* 1929 ''[[Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad]]''
*1949 ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]''
* 1932 ''The Name 'Nodens' '' (in: ''Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire''.)
*1953 ''[[The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth]] Beorhthelm's Son'' (published with the essay ''[[Ofermod]]'')
* 1932/1935 ''[[Sigelwara Land]]'' parts I and II
*1954-1955 ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''<ol type="I"><li>''[[The Fellowship of the Ring]]'' (1954)</li><li>''[[The Two Towers]]'' (1954) </li><li>''[[The Return of the King]]'' (1955)</li></ol>
* 1934 ''[[The Reeve's Prologue and Tale|The Reeve's Tale]]'' (rediscovery of dialect humour, introducing the Hengwrt manuscript into textual criticism of Chaucer's ''The Canterbury Tales'')
*1962 ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]] and Other Verses from the Red Book''
* 1936 ''[[Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics]]'' (lecture on [[Beowulf]] criticism)
*1964 ''[[Tree and Leaf]]'' (a collection of writings)
* 1939 ''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' (Tolkien's philosophy on fantasy, given as the 1939 Andrew Lang lecture)
**''[[Leaf by Niggle]]''
* 1944 ''[[Sir Orfeo]]'' (an edition of the medieval poem)
**''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' (essay)
* 1947 ''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' (essay, very central for understanding Tolkien's views on fastasy)
* 1966 ''[[The Tolkien Reader]]'' (a collection of writings, published only in the US)
* 1953 ''Ofermod'', published with the poem ''The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm's Son''
*1967 ''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]''
* 1953 ''Middle English "Losenger"''
*1967 ''[[The Road Goes Ever On (book)|The Road Goes Ever On]]'', with [[Donald Swann]]
* 1962 ''[[Ancrene Wisse (book)|Ancrene Wisse]]:  The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle''
**[[Bilbo's Last Song]] (included in 1978 edition)
* 1963 ''English and Welsh''
* 1966 ''[[The Jerusalem Bible]]'' (contributing translator and lexicographer)


=== Posthumous Publications ===
===Academic works===
* 1975 Translations of ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]'', ''[[Pearl]]'' and ''[[Sir Orfeo]]''
* 1922 ''[[A Middle English Vocabulary]]''
* 1976 ''[[The Father Christmas Letters]]''
*1925 ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (edition)|Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]'', with [[E.V. Gordon]]
* 1977 ''[[The Silmarillion]]'' ISBN 0-618-12698-8 (HM).
*1925 ''[[Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography]]''
* 1979 ''Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien''
*1925 ''[[The Devil's Coach-Horses]]''
* 1980 ''[[Unfinished Tales]] of Númenor and Middle-earth'' ISBN 0-618-15405-1 (HM).
*1929 ''[[Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad]]''
* 1980 ''Poems and Stories'' (a compilation of ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]'', ''The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son'', ''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'', ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]'', ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]'' and ''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]'')
* 1932 ''[[The Name 'Nodens']]'' (published in ''[[Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Site in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire|Report on the Excavation in Lydney Park]]'')
* 1981 ''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'' (eds. [[Christopher Tolkien]] and [[Humphrey Carpenter]])
*1932-1934 ''[[Sigelwara Land]]'' parts I and II
* 1981 (1982) ''[[The Old English Exodus|The Old English Exodus Text]]''
*1934 ''[[Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale]]''
* 1982 ''[[Finn and Hengest]]: The Fragment and the Episode''
*1936 ''[[Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics]]'' (lecture on ''[[Beowulf (poem)|Beowulf]]'' criticism)
* 1982 ''[[Mr. Bliss]]''
*1939 ''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' (essay on Tolkien's philosophy on fantasy)
* 1983 ''[[The Monsters and the Critics]]'' (an essay collection)
* 1939 ''[[The Reeve's Tale (version)|The Reeve's Tale: Version Prepared for Recitation at the 'Summer Diversions'<nowiki/>]]''
** ''[[Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics]]'' (1936)
*1944 ''[[Sir Orfeo (booklet)|Sir Orfeo]]'' (translation of a Middle English poem)
** ''[[On Translating Beowulf]]'' (1940)
* 1953 ''[[Ofermod]]'' (published with the poem ''[[The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth]]'')
** ''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' (1947)
* 1953 ''[[Middle English 'Losenger' (essay)|Middle English 'Losenger'<nowiki/>]]''
** ''[[A Secret Vice]]'' (1930)
*1962 ''[[Ancrene Wisse]]''
** ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]''
*1963 ''[[English and Welsh]]''
** ''[[English and Welsh]]'' (1955)
*1966 ''[[The Jerusalem Bible]]'' (contributing translator and lexicographer)
* 1983–1996 ''[[The History of Middle-earth]]'':<ol type="I"><li>''[[The Book of Lost Tales Part 1]]'' (1983)</li><li>''[[The Book of Lost Tales Part 2]]'' (1984)</li><li>''[[The Lays of Beleriand]]'' (1985)</li><li>''[[The Shaping of Middle-earth]]'' (1986)</li><li>''[[The Lost Road and Other Writings]]'' (1987)</li><li>''[[The Return of the Shadow]]'' (The History of ''The Lord of the Rings'' vol. 1) (1988)</li><li>''[[The Treason of Isengard]]'' (The History of ''The Lord of the Rings'' vol. 2) (1989)</li><li>''[[The War of the Ring]]'' (The History of ''The Lord of the Rings'' vol. 3) (1990)</li><li>''[[Sauron Defeated]]'' (The History of ''The Lord of the Rings'' vol. 4, including [[The Notion Club Papers]]) (1992)</li><li>''[[Morgoth's Ring]]'' (The Later Silmarillion vol. 1) (1993)</li><li>''[[The War of the Jewels]]'' (The Later Silmarillion vol. 2) (1994)</li><li>''[[The Peoples of Middle-earth]]'' (1996)</li></ol>
** ''Index'' (2002)
* 1995 ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator]]'' (a compilation of Tolkien's art)
* 1998 ''[[Roverandom]]''
* 2002 ''Beowulf and the Critics'' ed. Michael D.C. Drout ("Beowulf: the monsters and the critics" together with editions of two drafts of the longer essay from which it was condensed.
* 2007 ''[[The Children of Húrin]]'' ed. Christopher Tolkien
* 2009 ''[[The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún]]'' ed. Christopher Tolkien


=== Audio Recordings ===
===Posthumous publications===
''Note: for a detailed listing of all recordings of Tolkien, see [[Audio recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien]]''
====1975—1990====
* 1967 ''Poems and Songs of Middle-Earth'', Caedmon TC 1231
*1975 ''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo]]'', ed. [[Christopher Tolkien]]
* 1975 ''J.R.R. Tolkien Reads and Sings his ''The Hobbit'' & ''The Lord of the Rings'', Caedmon TC 1477, TC 1478 (based on an [[1952 tape recording|August, 1952 recording]] by [[George Sayer]])
* 1976 ''[[Letters from Father Christmas]]'', ed. [[Baillie Tolkien]]
*1977 ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*1980 ''[[Unfinished Tales]] of Númenor and Middle-earth'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*1980 ''[[Poems and Stories]]'' (a collection of stories)
**''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]''
**''[[The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth]] Beorhthelm's Son''
**''[[On Fairy-Stories]]''
**''[[Leaf by Niggle]]''
**''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]''
**''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]''
*1981 ''[[The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien]]'', eds. Christopher Tolkien, [[Humphrey Carpenter]]
*1982 ''[[The Old English Exodus]]'' (translation of an Old English poem, only limited copies were printed)
*1982 ''[[Finn and Hengest]]: The Fragment and the Episode'', ed. [[Alan Bliss]]
*1982 ''[[Mr. Bliss]]''
* 1983 ''[[The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien (a collection of linguistic essays and lectures)
**''[[Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics]]''
**''[[On Translating Beowulf]]''
**''[[On Fairy-Stories]]''
**''[[A Secret Vice]]''
**''[[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight]]''
**''[[English and Welsh]]''
**[[Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford|Valedictory Address]]'' to the University of Oxford''
*1983–1996 ''[[The History of Middle-earth]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien<ol type="I"><li>''[[The Book of Lost Tales Part One]]'' (1983)</li><li>''[[The Book of Lost Tales Part Two]]'' (1984)</li><li>''[[The Lays of Beleriand]]'' (1985)</li><li>''[[The Shaping of Middle-earth]]'' (1986)</li><li>''[[The Lost Road and Other Writings]]'' (1987)</li><li>''[[The Return of the Shadow]]'' (The History of ''TLotR'' vol. 1) (1988)</li><li>''[[The Treason of Isengard]]'' (The History of ''TLotR'' vol. 2) (1989) </li><li>''[[The War of the Ring]]'' (The History of ''TLotR'' vol. 3) (1990) </li><li>''[[Sauron Defeated]]'' (The History of ''TLotR'' vol. 4) (1992)</li><li>''[[Morgoth's Ring]]'' (The Later Silmarillion vol. 1) (1993)</li><li>''[[The War of the Jewels]]'' (The Later Silmarillion vol. 2) (1994)</li><li>''[[The Peoples of Middle-earth]]'' (1996)</li></ol>
**''[[The History of Middle-earth Index|Index]]'' (2002)
*1985 ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien's Letters to Rhona Beare]]'' (only limited copies were printed)
 
====1990—today====
* 1990 ''[[Bilbo's Last Song]]''
* 1997 ''[[Tales from the Perilous Realm]]'' (a collection of stories and poems)
**''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]''
**''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]''
**''[[Leaf by Niggle]]''
**''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]''
**''[[Roverandom]]'' (included in 2008 edition)
**''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' (included in 2008 edition)
*1998 ''[[Roverandom]]'', eds. [[Wayne G. Hammond]], [[Christina Scull]]
* 1999 ''[[Farmer Giles of Ham]]'', eds. Wayne G. Hammond, Christina Scull
*2001 ''[[Tree and Leaf]]'' (a collection of writings)
**''[[On Fairy-Stories]]'' and ''[[Leaf by Niggle]]''
**''[[Mythopoeia]]'' (included in 1988 edition)
**''[[The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth]] Beorhthelm's Son'' (newly included)
*2002 ''[[Beowulf and the Critics]]'', ed. [[Michael D.C. Drout]] (a lecture series)
*2003 ''[[The Annotated Hobbit]]: Revised and Expanded Edition'', ed. [[Douglas A. Anderson]]
**containing ''[[The Dragon's Visit]]'', among other writings (newly included)
* 2005 ''[[Smith of Wootton Major]]'', ed. [[Verlyn Flieger]]
*2007 ''[[The History of The Hobbit]]'', ed. [[John D. Rateliff]]
*2007 ''[[The Children of Húrin]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*2008 ''[[Tolkien On Fairy-stories]]'', eds. Verlyn Flieger, Douglas A. Anderson (an extended edition of the ''[[On Fairy-stories|essay]]'')
*2009 ''[[The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*2013 ''[[The Fall of Arthur]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*2014 ''[[Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary]], together with Sellic Spell'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*2014 ''[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]] and Other Verses from the Red Book'', eds. Wayne G. Hammond, Christina Scull
**containing ''[[Once upon a Time]]'', among other writings (newly included)
*2015 ''[[The Story of Kullervo]]'', ed. Verlyn Flieger
* 2016 ''[[A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages]]'', eds. [[Dimitra Fimi]], [[Andrew Higgins]] (an extended edition of the ''[[A Secret Vice|lecture]]'')
*2016 ''[[The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun]]'', ed. Verlyn Flieger
*2017 ''[[Beren and Lúthien]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*2018 ''[[The Fall of Gondolin]]'', ed. Christopher Tolkien
*2021 ''[[The Nature of Middle-earth]]'', ed. [[Carl F. Hostetter]]
*2022 ''[[The Fall of Númenor]]'', ed. [[Brian Sibley]]
*2023 ''[[The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth]]'', ed. [[Peter Grybauskas]]
 
===Artwork===
*1979 ''[[Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien]]'' ed. Christopher Tolkien
*1992 ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien: Life and Legend]]'' ed. Judith Priestman
*1995 ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator]]'', eds. Wayne G. Hammond, Christina Scull
* 2011 ''[[The Art of The Hobbit]]'', eds. Wayne G. Hammond, Christina Scull
*2015 ''[[The Art of The Lord of the Rings]]'', eds. Wayne G. Hammond, Christina Scull
*2018 ''[[Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth]]'', ed. Catherine McIlwaine
*2018 ''[[Tolkien: Treasures ]]'', ed. Catherine McIlwaine
*2022 ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript]]'', eds. William M. Fliss, Sarah C. Schaefer
 
===Audio recordings===
''Note: for a detailed listing of all recordings of Tolkien, see [[Index:Audio recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien|Audio recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien]]''  
* 1967 ''[[Poems and Songs of Middle Earth]]'', Caedmon TC 1231
*1975 ''J.R.R. Tolkien Reads and Sings his ''The Hobbit'' & ''The Lord of the Rings'', Caedmon TC 1477, TC 1478 (based on an [[1952 tape recording|August, 1952 recording]] by [[George Sayer]])''


==Awards==
==Awards==
This list contains awards or recognitions given to J.R.R. Tolkien, it does not include awards given to his individual publications.
This list contains awards or recognitions given to J.R.R. Tolkien, it does not include awards given to his individual publications.
* D. Lit., in University College, Dublin (1954)
*D. Lit., in University College, Dublin (1954)
* Commander of Order of the British Empire (1972)
*Commander of Order of the British Empire (1972)
* Doctorate of Letters by Oxford University (1972)
*Doctorate of Letters by Oxford University (1972)
* 6th "best postwar British writer" (The Times, 2008) [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece]
*6th "best postwar British writer" (The Times, 2008) [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece]


==Other names==
One year after his death, Tolkien was the inaugural winner of the [[1974]] ''[[Wikipedia:Gandalf Award|Gandalf Grand Master Award]]'' for life achievement in fantasy writing (the award itself named after his creation, [[Gandalf]]). In [[1978]] ''The Silmarillion'' won the first of the two ''Gandalf Award for Book-Length Fantasy''.
 
==Names and pseudonyms==
[[File:JRRT.jpeg|thumb|JRRT's monogram]]
[[File:JRRT.jpeg|thumb|JRRT's monogram]]
J, John, Ronald, Tollers, JRsquared, Ruginwaldus Dwalakôneis, Arcastar, "Eisphorides Acribus Polyglotteus, orator Graecorum", N.N, Fisiologvs, Kingston Bagpuize, Oxymore, Raegnold Hraedmoding
In a letter to written by Arthur Tolkien his family after Tolkien's birth he describes the inspiration behind Tolkien's name:
 
{{Blockquote|"The boy’s first name will be ‘John’ after its grandfather, probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel." Ronald had no familial precedent but Reuel was Arthur's middle name.<ref name="BII" />|}}
 
*''Luttro'' - [[Esperanto]] word for "otter", possibly referring to himself, in his private ''[[Book of the Foxrook]]'' ([[1909]]); possibly an allusion to [[Animalic]]<ref>{{HM|SV}}, p. 40-1 [note 19];</ref>
*''[[Arcastar]]'' - [[Quenya]] rention of ''Tolkien'' used in ''[[Tolkien in Oxford]]'', of unclear meaning.
*''Eisphorides Acribus Polyglotteus, orator Graecorum'' - Tag name in the annual Latin debates during studies at Oxford.<ref>[[John Garth]], ''[[Tolkien and the Great War]], "Part One: The immortal four", p. 19''</ref>
*''[[Fisiologus]]'' - Signature of a [[Adventures in Unnatural History and Medieval Metres, being the Freaks of Fisiologus|poem]] published in ''[[The Stapeldon Magazine]]'' (1927).
*''J.'' - Signature of a [[From the many-willow'd margin of the immemorial Thames|poem]] published in ''[[The Stapeldon Magazine]]'' (1913).
*''John'' - <ref name="Amy">{{L|309}}</ref>
*''JRsquared'' - <ref name="Amy"/>
*''Kingston Bagpuize''- Signature of a [[Progress in Bimble Town|poem]] published in the ''[[Oxford Magazine]]'' (1931).
*''Rægnold Hrædmóding'' - [[Old English]] rendition of Tolkien's name, used to sign the poem ''[[For W.H.A.]]'' (1967).
*''Ronald'' - Name for Tolkien's near kin, which he treated with respect and refused to be abbreviated or tagged with.<ref name="Amy"/>
*''Ruginwaldus Dwalakôneis'' - "Gothicizied" version of Tolkien's name.<ref>{{L|272}}</ref>
*''[[Tollers]]'' - His name among the [[Inklings]].
*''[[N.N.]]'' - Signature of a [[The Clerkes Compleinte|poem]] published in ''[[The Gryphon, Vol.4 No.3|The Gryphon]]'' (1922), an abbreviation of ''[[wikipedia:Nomen Nescio|Nomen Nescio]]''.
*''Oxymore'' - Signature of the poem ''[[Knocking at the Door]]'', written c.1927 and published in ''The Oxford Magazine'' (1937).


==Family Tree==
==Family Tree==
Line 239: Line 375:
{{familytree/end}}
{{familytree/end}}


== References ==
==See also==  
* ''Biography'': Carpenter, Humphrey (1977). ''J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography'', New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-04-928037-6
*[[:Category:Images by J.R.R. Tolkien|Images by J.R.R. Tolkien]]
* ''Letters'': Carpenter, Humphrey and Tolkien, Christopher  (eds.) (1981). ''The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien''. ISBN 0-618-05699-8
*[[:Category:Images of J.R.R. Tolkien|Images of J.R.R. Tolkien]]
* ''HoME'': Tolkien, Christopher (ed.) (12 volumes, 1996-2002), ''The History of Middle-earth''
*[[J.R.R. Tolkien/Quotations|J.R.R. Tolkien Quotes]]
*[[J.R.R. Tolkien Timeline]]
*[[Chronology of Tolkien's writings]]
*[[Legendarium]]
*[[Plaques and Memorials]]
*[[Index:Unpublished material|Unpublished material]]


== Further Reading ==
==Further reading==
A small selection of books about Tolkien and his works:
A small selection of books about Tolkien and his works:
* Anderson, Douglas A., Michael D. C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger (eds.) (2004). ‘’Tolkien Studies’’, Vol 1
* Anderson, Douglas A., Michael D. C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger (founder eds.). ''[[Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review]]''
* Chance, Jane (ed.) (2003). ''Tolkien the Medievalist'', London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28944-0
*Carpenter, Humphrey (1979). ''[[The Inklings (book)|The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends]]'' ISBN 0395276284
* Chance, Jane (ed.) (2004). ''Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, a Reader'', Louisville: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-813-12301-1
*Chance, Jane (ed.) (2003). ''[[Tolkien the Medievalist]]'', London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28944-0
* Flieger, Verlyn and Carl F. Hostetter (eds.) (2000). ''Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle Earth'', Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30530-7. DDC 823.912. LC PR6039.
*Chance, Jane (ed.) (2004). ''[[Tolkien and the Invention of Myth]], a Reader'', Louisville: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-813-12301-1
* O'Neill, Timothy R. (1979). ''The Individuated Hobbit: Jung, Tolkien and the Archetypes of Middle-earth'', Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-395-28208-X
*Duriez, Colin and 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''. ISBN 1902694139
* Pearce, Joseph (1998). ''Tolkien: Man and Myth'', London: HarperCollinsPublishers. ISBN 000-274018-4
*Duriez, Colin (2003). ''[[Tolkien and C.S. Lewis]]: The Gift of Friendship''. , ISBN 1587680262
* Shippey, T. A. (2000). ''J.R.R. Tolkien Author of the Century'', Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-12764-X, ISBN 0-618-25759-4 (pbk)
*Flieger, Verlyn and Carl F. Hostetter (eds.) (2000). [[Tolkien's Legendarium|''Tolkien's'' Legendarium'': Essays on'' The History of Middle Earth]], Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30530-7. DDC 823.912. LC PR6039.
* Strachey, Barbara (1981). ''Journeys of Frodo: an Atlas of The Lord of the Rings'', London, Boston: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 0-049-12016-6
*O'Neill, Timothy R. (1979). ''[[The Individuated Hobbit]]: Jung, Tolkien and the Archetypes of Middle-earth'', Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-395-28208-X
* Tolkien, John & Priscilla (1992). ''The Tolkien Family Album'', London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-26-110239-7
*Pearce, Joseph (1999). ''[[Tolkien: A Celebration]]'', London: HarperCollinsPublishers. ISBN 000-628120-6
* White, Michael (2003). ''Tolkien: A Biography'', New American Library. ISBN 0451212428
*Pearce, Joseph (1998). ''[[Tolkien: Man and Myth]]'', London: HarperCollinsPublishers. ISBN 000-274018-4
* ''The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends''. Humphrey Carpenter (1979), ISBN 0395276284
*Shippey, T. A. (2000). ''[[J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century]]'', Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-12764-X, ISBN 0-618-25759-4 (pbk)
* ''The Inklings Handbook: The Lives, Thought and Writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Their Friends''. Colin Duriez and David Porter (2001), ISBN 1902694139
*Shippey, T. A. (2004). '[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31766 Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (1892–1973)]', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* ''Finding God in the Lord of the Rings'''.  Kurt D. Bruner and Jim Ware (2003), ISBN 084238555X
*Tolkien, John & Priscilla (1992). ''[[The Tolkien Family Album]]'', London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-26-110239-7
* ''Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship''.  Colin Duriez (2003), ISBN 1587680262
*White, Michael (2003). ''Tolkien: A Biography'', New American Library. ISBN 0451212428
 
==External links==
*[http://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/ J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch]
*{{WP|J.R.R. Tolkien}}
 
{{references|notes}}


==Notes==
{{seq-start}}
# As described by Christopher Tolkien in ''Hervarar Saga ok Heidreks Konung'' (Oxford University, Trinity College). B. Litt. thesis. 1953/4. [Year uncertain], ''The Battle of the Goths and the Huns'', in: Saga-Book (University College, London, for the Viking Society for Northern Research) 14, part 3 (1955-6). See [http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/bibl4.html publications by and about Christopher Tolkien]
{{seq-head}}
{{inklings}}
{{seq
[[Category:Tolkien Family|Tolkien, J.R.R.]]
| pvac=None
[[Category:Authors|Tolkien, J.R.R.]]
| prev=Position created
[[Category:T.C.B.S.|Tolkien, J.R.R.]]
| list=President of [[The Tolkien Society]]
[[Category:Inklings|Tolkien, J.R.R.]]
| dates=[[27 June]] [[1972]] - ''In perpetuo''
[[category:Linguists|Tolkien, J.R.R.]]
| next=None; perpetual title
[[category:British people|Tolkien, J.R.R.]]
}}
[[category:People by name|Tolkien, J.R.R.]]
{{seq-end}}
[[de:J.R.R. Tolkien]]
{{Inklings}}
{{languages}}
{{tolkiensociety}}
{{IllustratorsHobbit}}
{{IllustratorsLOTR}}
{{IllustratorsSilmarillion}}
{{IllustratorsCalendars}}
{{Publishedmajorbooks}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tolkien, J.R.R.}}
[[Category:Authors]]
[[Category:Artists]]
[[Category:Cartographers]]
[[Category:British people]]
[[Category:Inklings]]
[[Category:Linguists]]
[[Category:People by name]]
[[Category:T.C.B.S.]]
[[Category:Tolkien Family]]
[[Category:Tolkien Society members]]
[[de:J._R._R._Tolkien]]
[[fr:tolkien:bio]]
[[fr:tolkien:bio]]
[[fi:J.R.R. Tolkien]]
[[fi:J.R.R. Tolkien]]

Latest revision as of 07:39, 14 March 2024

The name J.R.R. Tolkien refers to more than one character, item or concept. For a list of other meanings, see J.R.R. Tolkien (disambiguation).
The name Tolkien refers to more than one character, item or concept. For a list of other meanings, see Tolkien (disambiguation).
"Who told you, and who sent you?" — Gandalf
This article or section needs more/new/more-detailed sources to conform to a higher standard and to provide proof for claims made.
D.W. Luebbert - Tolkien Daydreams.jpg
J.R.R. Tolkien
Biographical information
Born3 January, 1892
Died2 September, 1973
(aged 81 years)
EducationUniversity of Oxford
OccupationAcademic
Author
Philologist
Poet
LocationUnited Kingdom
WebsiteTolkien: The official site of the Tolkien Estate

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, (3 January, 18922 September, 1973) was a philologist and writer, best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. He worked as reader and professor in English language at the University of Leeds from 1920 to 1925; as professor of Anglo-Saxon language at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945; and of English language and literature from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C.S. Lewis, and a member of the Inklings, a literary discussion group to which both Lewis and Owen Barfield belonged.

Tolkien created a legendarium, a fictional mythology about the remote past of Earth, of which Middle-earth in particular is the main stage. Parts of his legendarium are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion and The History of Middle-earth series (published by his son, Christopher Tolkien, posthumously) revealed Tolkien's lifelong work on that same legendarium, a process which he called "sub-creation". Tolkien's other published works include philological essays, modern adaptations of medieval literature and rendering of stories originally told to his children but not directly related to the legendarium.

Biography[edit | edit source]

Family ancestry[edit | edit source]

See also: Tolkien Family

Many of Tolkien's paternal ancestors were craftsmen. According to Tolkien's own understanding, the Tolkien family had its roots in Saxony (present-day Germany), but had been living in England since the 18th century, becoming "quickly and intensely English (not British)".[1] Tolkien believed that the Tolkien is the anglicised form of Tollkiehn (i.e. German: tollkühn, "foolhardy", the etymological English calque would be "dull-keen", a literal translation of "oxymoron").[2] Research by linguist Ryszard Derdziński suggests that the name is of Low Prussian origin and probably means "son/descendant of Tolk".[3] Tolkien was dismissive of this theory.[4]

Childhood[edit | edit source]

Plaque commemorating J.R.R. Tolkien's birthplace in President Steyn Avenue, Bloemfontein.

Tolkien was born on 3 January, 1892, in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now the Free State province of South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (18571896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, née Suffield (18701904). Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel, who was born on 17 February, 1894. He was addressed by his family as “Ronald” as it has no history of use in the Tolkien family.[5]

While living in Africa he was bitten by a large 'baboon spider', and this echoes in his stories. However, Tolkien said that he did not develop a particular fear of spiders after this event, and, when he was older, recalled picking small spiders up and putting them outside.[6]

When he was three, Tolkien 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 of a severe brain haemorrhage before he could join them. This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took him to live with her parents in Birmingham, England. Soon after in 1896, they moved to Sarehole (now in Hall Green), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham. He enjoyed exploring Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog and the Clent Hills and Lickey Hills, which would later inspire scenes in his books along with other Worcestershire towns and villages such as Bromsgrove, Alcester and Alvechurch and places such as his aunt's farm of Bag End, the name of which would be used in his fiction.[5]

Ronald and Hilary Tolkien in 1905

Mabel tutored her two sons, and Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil. She taught him a great deal of botany, and she awoke in her son 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 of Latin very early. He could read by the age of four, and could write fluently soon afterwards. He attended St. Philip's school and quickly outpaced his classmates so his mother pulled him out and enrolled him in King Edward's School[5], Birmingham and, while a student there, helped "line the route" for the coronation parade of King George V, being posted just outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. He later attended Exeter College, Oxford.

His mother converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900, despite vehement protests by her Baptist family. She died of diabetes in 1904, when Tolkien was twelve, at Fern Cottage, Rednal, which they were then renting. For the rest of his life, Tolkien felt that she had become a martyr for her faith; this had a profound effect on his own Catholic beliefs.[5] Tolkien's devout faith was significant in the conversion of C.S. Lewis to Anglicanism.

During his subsequent orphanhood he was brought up by Father Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory, in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham. He lived there in the shadow of Perrott's Folly and the Victorian tower of Edgbaston waterworks, which may have influenced the images of the dark towers within his works. Another strong influence was the romantic medievalist paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a large and world-renowned collection of works and has had it put on free public display from around 1908.

J.R.R. Tolkien in 1911

Youth[edit | edit source]

Tolkien met and fell in love with Edith Mary Bratt, three years his senior, at the age of sixteen. Father Francis forbade him from meeting, talking, or even corresponding with her until he was twenty-one. He obeyed this prohibition to the letter.[7]

In 1911, while they were at King Edward's School, Birmingham, Tolkien and three friends, Robert Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith and Christopher Wiseman, formed a semi-secret society which they called "the T.C.B.S.", the initials standing for "Tea Club and Barrovian Society", alluding to their fondness of drinking tea in Barrow's Stores near the school and, illegally, in the school library. After leaving school, the members stayed in touch, and on 25 December, 1914, they held a "Council" in London, at Wiseman's home. For Tolkien, the result of this meeting was a strong dedication to writing poetry.

In the summer of 1911, Tolkien went on holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollects vividly in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo's journey across the Misty Mountains ("including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods") is directly based on his adventures as their party of twelve hiked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, and on to camp in the moraines beyond Mürren. Fifty-seven years later, Tolkien remembers his regret at leaving the view of the eternal snows of Jungfrau and Silberhorn ("the Silvertine (Celebdil) of my dreams"). They went across the Kleine Scheidegg on to Grindelwald and across the Grosse Scheidegg to Meiringen. They continued across the Grimsel Pass and through the upper Valais to Brig, and on to the Aletsch glacier and Zermatt.[8]

Tolkien in 1916, wearing his British Army uniform in a photograph from the middle years of WWI

On the evening of his twenty-first birthday (1913), Tolkien wrote to Edith a declaration of his love and asked her to marry him. She replied saying that she was already engaged, but had done so because she had believed Tolkien had forgotten her. The two met up and beneath a railway viaduct renewed their love, with Edith returning her ring and choosing to marry Tolkien instead. A condition of their engagement was that she was to convert to Catholicism for him. They were engaged in Birmingham, in January 1913.

With his childhood love of landscape, he visited Cornwall in 1914 and he was said to be deeply impressed by the singular Cornish coastline and sea.

By late 1914, his final year at the University of Oxford, he joined the Officer's Training Corps.[9] After his graduation (Exeter College, Oxford) with a first-class degree in English language in 1915, Tolkien joined the British Army effort in World War I. In late '15 he received military training at Rugeley Camp in Staffordshire[10] and served as a second lieutenant in the eleventh battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Tolkien married Edith in Warwick, England, on 22 March, 1916 before leaving for the War. His battalion was moved to France in 1916, where Tolkien served as a communications officer during the Battle of the Somme, until he came down with trench fever on 27 October, and was moved back to England on 8 November. Many of his fellow servicemen, as well as many of his closest friends, were killed in the war. During his recovery in a cottage in Great Haywood, Staffordshire, England, he began to work on what he called The Book of Lost Tales, beginning with The Fall of Gondolin. Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps, and was promoted to lieutenant. When he was stationed at Thirtle Bridge, East Yorkshire, one day he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and Edith began to dance for him in a clearing thick with hemlock plants in bloom. This incident inspired the account of the meeting of Beren and Lúthien,[11] and Tolkien considered Edith his Lúthien.[12]

Tolkien and Edith had four children: John Francis Reuel (16 November, 1917 - 22 January, 2003), Michael Hilary Reuel (22 October, 1920 - 27 February, 1984), Christopher John Reuel (21 November, 1924 - 16 January, 2020) and Priscilla Anne Reuel (18 June, 1929 - 28 February, 2022).

Leeds and Oxford[edit | edit source]

Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was at the Oxford English Dictionary, working on words starting with the letter W.[13] He later said of that "I learned more in those two years than in any other equal period of my life".[14] In 1920 he took up a post as Reader in English language at the University of Leeds,[15] and in 1924 was made a professor there.[14] The start was rough: though Gordon found Tolkien a room in Leeds,[16] Edith and young John still lived in Oxford. In weekends, Tolkien would go to his family - now expanded with the birth of Michael. Not until 1921 did Tolkien get full housing for his family, first at 5 Holly Bank[17] and then at 11 St. Mark's Terrace.[18] They later moved to 2 Darnley Road.

Since 1920, Tolkien dedicated his time, even vacations, to finding extra work to supplement his family's income, especially for doctor bills[note 1] and educate his children. He "stole" some free time for himself and his personal hobby of writing his own mythology.[19]

W. A. Craigie resigned from the post of Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at the Oxford English School, and Tolkien wrote a letter expressing his desire to return there[15] which he did in 1925.

Tolkien assisted Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the unearthing of a Roman Asclepieion at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, in 1928. During his time at Pembroke, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings.

The Hobbit[edit | edit source]

It was during his time as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, in the late 1920s, that he semi-randomly scribbled the words "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit" on the back of a School Certificate paper that he was marking. These words evolved into a story like the ones he was making up for his children. He did not go any further than that at the time, although in the following years he drew up Thrór's map.[6]

The tale itself he wrote in the early 1930s. It was mostly enjoyed by his eldest son John (13) than the younger ones. His peers at Oxford also "forced" him to lend copies to read.[20] Eventually he lent it to the Reverend Mother Superior of Cherwell Edge and to his former pupil Elaine Griffiths who was staying in the Cherwell Edge girl's hostel, and it was seen by her student, Susan Dagnall, who worked in Allen and Unwin. It was the 10-year old son of Sir Stanley Unwin, Rayner, who wrote such an enthusiastic review of the book.[21]

The 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" had a lasting influence on Beowulf research.[22]

By January of 1937 Tolkien was corresponding with Allen and Unwin (who also showed interest in Mr. Bliss).[23] Around the time The Hobbit was published (1937) Tolkien suffered from an ailment and had to use crutches, the only time he was free from examining work.[24]

Lord of the Rings[edit | edit source]

See also: The Lord of the Rings#Writing process

The success of The Hobbit and a request for its sequel, was an opportunity to combine his personal desire for writing, and financial needs, and agreed on writing a sequel.[19]

In the turn of 1939, and in the midst of writing the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien faced financial stress and was obliged to do exams and lectures: his son, Michael was preparing for university, and Christopher, being home-schooled for health reasons, wanted to go to school.[25] In the summer of that year, while gardening, Tolkien fell and suffered a concussion which required stitches; he was unwell for some time[26]:p. 21 and this, along with his fatigue, worries, obligations, Edith's illness, his loss of his chief assistant and understudy, prevented him from continuing his writing, including a foreword to Beowulf as had promised.[25] At the outbreak of WWII, his academic duties increased.[27] Juggling between work, "Civil Defence" and writing in intervals, he doubted that, because of the War, completing the book had any use.[28] Failing to progress during Christmas vacations, he resumed only two years later. It was the enthusiasm of his friends and Christopher (to whom he was sending copies by mail to South Africa) who encouraged him to continue.[26]:p. 25

In 1945, he moved to Merton College, Oxford, becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959. In 1946 he faced fatigue from academic work and an illness, and although he recovered, and was free from examining work, he had to deal with a "mountain of neglects".[24]

Tolkien spent the late summer (August-September) of 1948, at the home of Michael at Payables Farm, Woodcote. As Michael and his family were on holidays, Tolkien found the time and quiet he needed to finish Lord of the Rings, close to a decade after the first sketches.[26]:p. 27

After a disagreement with Allen and Unwin concerning "The Silmarillion", and failing to reach an agreement with Collins, he settled the dispute with the Unwins. He reported to Rayner Unwin that he had been unwell (having recovered from "a terrible bout" of fibrositis and neuritis of the arm) burdened and downhearted. In the prospect of a nearing retirement of poverty, during which he would work as an examiner to survive, and the rising paper costs, he had modified his views ("Better something than nothing!").[29] Tolkien readily agreed to the 'profit-sharing' arrangement, where Tolkien would not receive an advance or royalties until the books had broken even.[30] Between 1953 and 1955 Tolkien worked closely with Allen & Unwin on production of The Lord of the Rings, agreeing on the division of volumes, their titles, correcting proofs that arrived at intervals, complete and correct artwork, the maps and the dust-jacket designs.[26]:p. 34

Later life and recognition[edit | edit source]

During the 1950s, Tolkien spent many of his long academic holidays at the home of his son John Francis in Stoke-on-Trent.

In 1959 Tolkien went to compulsory retirement, which he found "both distressing, and extremely laborious", especially with the less than desirable pension.[31] For him, 1963 was a "dreadful year", including the death of C.S. Lewis (22 November), an illness that prevented Tolkien and Edith from celebrating Christmas, and after that, Faith Faulconbridge leaving Christopher; Tolkien expressed "fear they have left their allegiance to our Mother [the Church]".[32] In the 1960s he complained about the effects of old age, and other difficulties and anxieties, some of which were caused by his own family.[33]

By the time of his retirement, Tolkien increasingly turned into a figure of public attention and literary fame. The sale of his books was so profitable that Tolkien regretted he had not taken early retirement. While at first he wrote enthusiastic answers to reader inquiries, he became more and more suspicious of emerging Tolkien fandom, especially among the hippie movement in the USA.

Fan attention became so intense that, with Joy Hill's suggestion,[34] Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory,[source?] and eventually he and Edith moved to Woodridings in Branksome, Poole near Bournemouth to escape his fame in Oxford.[35] In June 1968, while preparing to move house, Tolkien fell down a set of stairs and had to stay in an Oxford hospital, leaving behind his obligations. He was expected to use crutches for all summer.[36] The couple lived in Poole until Edith's death in November 1971.[35] The widowed professor moved back to Oxford, 21 Merton Street in March 1972.[37][38]

W.H. Auden was a frequent correspondent and long-time friend of Tolkien's, initiated by Auden's fascination with The Lord of the Rings: Auden was among the most prominent early critics to praise the work. Tolkien wrote in a 1971 letter,

I am [...] very deeply in Auden's debt in recent years. His support of me and interest in my work has been one of my chief encouragements. He gave me very good reviews, notices and letters from the beginning when it was by no means a popular thing to do. He was, in fact, sneered at for it.
Letter 327

The last known photograph of Tolkien, taken 9 August 1973, next to one of his favourite trees (a Pinus nigra) in the Botanic Garden, Oxford

In a 1972 letter he deplores having become a cult-figure, but admits that

even the nose of a very modest idol (younger than Chu-Bu and not much older than Sheemish) cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!
Letter 336

Tolkien was awarded a CBE ("Commander of the British Empire") by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on 28 March, 1972.

The grave of J.R.R. and Edith Tolkien

Edith Tolkien died on 28 November, 1971, at the age of eighty-two, and Tolkien had the name Lúthien engraved on the stone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. When Tolkien died 21 months later of pneumonia on 2 September, 1973, at the age of 81, he was buried in the same grave, with Beren added to his name, so that the engraving now reads:

Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889 – 1971
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892 – 1973

Posthumously named after Tolkien are the Tolkien Road in Eastbourne, East Sussex, and the asteroid 2675 Tolkien. Tolkien Way in Stoke-On-Trent is named after J.R.R.'s son Father John Francis Tolkien, who used to be the priest in charge at the nearby Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Angels and St. Peter in Chains.

Appearance[edit | edit source]

The early images of J.R.R. Tolkien in school and university show a serious young man, average height, slender, clean-shaven, and with his hair parted in the middle.

At school he was considered too light for the rugby team, and in order to join he tried to make it up with ferocity during the game, and eventually he was accepted.[39]

By 1916 Tolkien had joined the army he had changed to a more conventional haircut, as well as a moustache for a short period of time.

Richard Plotz, who visited Tolkien in 1966, described him as

...a medium-sized man ... [who] looks much younger than his seventy-four years. Like one of his creations, the Hobbits, he is a bit fat in the stomach ...
—"J.R.R. Tolkien Talks about the Discovery of Middle-earth, the Origins of Elvish", Seventeen (January 1967), p. 92

In a letter on 8 February, 1967, to inter­viewers Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, Tolkien stated that he was not "tall, or strongly built. I now measure 5 ft 8 1/2, and am slightly built, with notably small hands. For most of my life I have been very thin and underweight. Since my early sixties I have become 'tubby'. Not unusual in men who took their exercise in games and swimming, when opportunities for these things cease".[21] In "The Man Who Understands Hobbits" (Daily Telegraph Magazine, 22 March 1968), the Plimmers also noted that Tolkien had 'grey eyes, firm tanned skin, silvery hair and quick decisive speech'.[40]

During Tolkien's time at King Edward's School he was noted for his choice in coloured socks.[41]

Clyde S. Kilby, who spent some time with Tolkien in the summer of 1966, noted that he "was always neatly dressed from necktie to shoes. One of his favourite suits was a herringbone with which he wore a green corduroy vest [waistcoat]. Always there was a vest, and nearly always a sport coat. He did not mind wearing a very broad necktie which in those days was out of style".[42]

Tolkien had a particular liking for decorative waistcoats: he told one correspondent that he had "one or two choice embroidered speci­mens, which I sometimes wear when required to make a speech, as I find they so fascinate the eyes of the audience that they do not notice if my dentures become a little loose with excitements of rhetoric"[43]

Interviewers have noted that Tolkien almost clung to his smoking pipe, cradling it in his hand, or speaking with it in his mouth, sometimes making him difficult to understand. One of these, Richard Plotz, wrote that Tolkien "took out a pipe as he entered his study, and all during the interview he held it clenched in his teeth, lighting and relighting it, talking through it; he never removed it from his mouth for more than five seconds" ('J.R.R. Tolkien Talks...', p. 92).

Character, personality, views[edit | edit source]

See also: Christianity

Tolkien attempted to describe himself for Deborah Webster:

"I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much. I love Wales (what is left of it, when mines, and the even more ghastly sea-side reasons, have done their worst), and especially the Welsh language. But I have not in fact been in W. for a long time (except for crossing it on the way to Ireland). I go frequently to Ireland (Eire: Southern Ireland) being fond of it and of (most of) its people; but the Irish language I find wholly unattractive."
Letter 213

Tolkien had an intense dislike for the side effects of industrialization, which he considered a devouring of the English countryside. For most of his adult life he eschewed automobiles, preferring to ride a bicycle. This attitude is perceptible in some parts of his work, such as the forced industrialization of The Shire in The Lord of the Rings.

In retrospect, Tolkien claimed that from the age of seven or eight, two interests dominated his subsequent perception of everything: elves and orcs.[note 2] Throughout his life he collected every detail related to it, which, along with the "Atlantis complex" dream, was the embryo of his Legendarium.[44]

Jesting on the name of Puffin Books, Tolkien said he disliked penguins and puffins for eating other birds's eggs.[45] He considered that Siamese cats "belong to the fauna of Mordor"[46] He also disliked spiders[47] although not that much as to kill them. He refused that this has anything to do with being bitten by a tarantula as a toddler.[6]

Tolkien boasted of himself to be "a world-class niggler".[48] He wrote The Lord of the Rings laboriously, preoccupied with detail, consistency and careful consideration of every word.[49][25]

Tolkien was insecure and lacked confidence in his own work, even when he was assured that it had value for others.[50] Father Robert Murray, Tolkien's personal friend, considered the professor "a complex and depressed man" and his work "projects his very depressed view of the universe".[51] Some analysts consider Tolkien's personality as an Assertive Mediator (INFP).<refAlycia, "J.R.R. Tolkien: Creator of Words and Worlds (The Lord of the Rings Personality Series)", 16personalities (accessed 14 January 2022)</ref>

Politically, Tolkien was a peaceful anarchist apolitical stance.[52]

"...there is much else that may be told." — Glóin
This article or section is a stub. Please help Tolkien Gateway by expanding it.


Writing[edit | edit source]

Cover design for the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Beginning with The Book of Lost Tales, written while recuperating from illness during World War I, Tolkien devised several themes that were reused in successive drafts of his legendarium. The two most prominent stories, the tales of Beren and Lúthien and that of Túrin, were carried forward into long narrative poems (published in The Lays of Beleriand). Tolkien wrote a brief summary of the mythology these poems were intended to represent, and that summary eventually evolved into "The Silmarillion", an epic history that Tolkien started three times but never published. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series The History of Middle-earth. From around 1936, he began to extend this framework to include the tale of The Fall of Númenor, which was inspired by the legend of Atlantis.

Tolkien was strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon literature, Germanic and Norse mythologies, Finnish mythology, the Bible, and Greek mythology. The works most often cited as sources for Tolkien's stories include Beowulf, the Kalevala, the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga saga and the Hervarar saga. Tolkien himself acknowledged Homer, Oedipus, and the Kalevala as influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas. His borrowings also came from numerous Middle English works and poems. A major philosophical influence on his writing is King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy known as the Lays of Boethius. Characters in The Lord of the Rings, such as Frodo, Treebeard and Elrond make noticeably Boethian remarks.

In addition to his mythological compositions, Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children. He wrote annual Christmas letters from Father Christmas for them, building up a series of short stories (later compiled and published as The Father Christmas Letters).[53] Other stories included Mr. Bliss, Roverandom,[54] Smith of Wootton Major,[55]Farmer Giles of Ham[56] and Leaf by Niggle. Roverandom and Smith of Wootton Major, like The Hobbit, borrowed ideas from his legendarium. Leaf by Niggle appears to be an autobiographical work, where a "very small man", Niggle, keeps painting leaves until finally he ends up with a tree.[57]

Tolkien never expected his fictional stories to become popular, but he was persuaded by a former student to publish a book he had written for his own children called The Hobbit in 1937. However, the book attracted adult readers as well, and it became popular enough for the publisher, George Allen & Unwin, to ask Tolkien to work on a sequel.

Even though he felt uninspired on the topic, this request prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic three-volume novel The Lord of the Rings (published 1954–55). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for The Lord of the Rings, during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set against the background of "The Silmarillion", but in a time long after it.

Tolkien at first intended The Lord of the Rings as a children's tale like The Hobbit, but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to The Hobbit, it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immense back story of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in The Silmarillion and other volumes. Tolkien's influence weighs heavily on the fantasy genre that grew after the success of The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien continued to work on the history of Middle-earth until his death. His son Christopher, with some assistance from fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay, organised some of this material into one volume, published as The Silmarillion in 1977. In 1980, Christopher Tolkien followed this with a collection of more fragmentary material under the title Unfinished Tales, and in subsequent years he published a massive amount of background material on the creation of Middle-earth in the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth. All these posthumous works contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative and outright contradictory accounts, since they were always a work in progress, and Tolkien only rarely settled on a definitive version for any of the stories. There is not even complete consistency to be found between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the two most closely related works, because Tolkien was never able to fully integrate all their traditions into each other. He commented in 1965, while editing The Hobbit for a third edition, that he would have preferred to completely rewrite the entire book.[source?]

The John P. Raynor, S.J., Library at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, preserves many of Tolkien's original manuscripts, notes and letters; other original material survives at Oxford's Bodleian Library. Marquette has the manuscripts and proofs of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and other manuscripts, including Farmer Giles of Ham, while the Bodleian holds "The Silmarillion" papers and Tolkien's academic work.

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 twentieth century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC, The Lord of the Rings was found to be the "Nation's Best-loved Book".[58] Australians voted The Lord of the Rings "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002 Tolkien was voted the ninety-second "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC,[59] and in 2004 he was voted thirty-fifth in the SABC3's Great South Africans,"SABC3's Great South Africans", (accessed 30 January 2024) the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited just to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found The Lord of the Rings (Der Herr der Ringe) to be their favourite work of literature.

Languages[edit | edit source]

Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology.

His mother taught him the rudiments of Latin very early. He could read by the age of four, and could write fluently soon afterwards.

In the early 1900s he was introduced to a secret "code" created by his Incledon cousins, called Animalic replacing words with animal-names. Soon after, with Mary they created Nevbosh, a more sophisticated language, with Tolkien contributing to the vocabulary and influencing the spelling.[60]

In 1909 he wrote the Book of the Foxrook in a notebook, with notes in Esperanto,[61] describing Privata Kodo Skauta ("Private Scout Code").[62] "consisting of a rune-like phonetic alphabet and a sizable number of ideographic symbols".[61] In the 1910s he composed Naffarin, a private language,[63]

He specialised in Greek philology in college, and in 1915 graduated Exeter College with a first-class degree in English language with Old Icelandic as special subject. By the time of his military training in 1915 he was working on a "mad hobby": a "nonsense fairy language"[64] which would become his "elvenlatin",[65] the first seed of his legendarium.

He worked for the Wikipedia:Oxford English Dictionary from 1918. In 1920, he went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty and even formed a "Viking Club". He gave courses in Old English heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory Germanic philology, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and Medieval Welsh. In 1925, aged 33, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.[15] He also made an appearance at SSC Highschool.

Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things of racial and linguistic significance", and he entertained notions of an inherited taste of language, which he termed the "native tongue" as opposed to "cradle tongue" in his 1955 lecture English and Welsh, which is crucial to his understanding of race and language. He considered west-midland Middle English his own "native tongue", and, as he wrote to W.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)".[6]

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 for the construction of artificial languages. The best developed of these are Quenya and Sindarin, the etymological connection between which are at the core of much of Tolkien's legendarium. Language and grammar for Tolkien were a matter of aesthetics and euphony, and Quenya in particular was designed from "phonæsthetic" considerations. It was intended as an "Elvenlatin", and was phonologically based on Latin, with ingredients from Finnish and Greek.[66] A notable addition came in late 1945 with Adûnaic, a language of a "faintly Semitic flavour",[67] connected with Tolkien's Atlantis myth, which by The Notion Club Papers ties directly into his ideas about inheritability of language, and via the "Second Age" and the Eärendil myth was grounded in the legendarium, thereby providing a link of Tolkien's 20th-century "real primary world" with the mythical past of his Middle-earth.

Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view of auxiliary languages. In 1930 a congress of Esperantists were told as much by him, in his lecture A Secret Vice, "Your language construction will breed a mythology",[68] but by 1956 he concluded that "Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends".[69]

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 today commonly accept Tolkien's revival of the spellings dwarves and elvish (instead of dwarfs and elfish), which had not been in use since the mid-1800s and earlier. Other terms he has coined, like legendarium and eucatastrophe, are mainly used in connection with Tolkien's work.

Works inspired by Tolkien[edit | edit source]

In a 1951 letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien writes about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which:

The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.
Letter 131

The hands and minds of many artists have indeed been inspired by Tolkien's legends. Personally known to him were Pauline Baynes (Tolkien's favourite illustrator of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Farmer Giles of Ham) and Donald Swann (who set the music to The Road Goes Ever On). Queen Margrethe II of Denmark created illustrations for The Lord of the Rings in the early 1970s. She sent them to Tolkien, who was struck by the similarity to the style of his own drawings.

But Tolkien was not fond of all the artistic representations of his works that were produced in his lifetime and was sometimes harshly disapproving.

In 1946, he rejected suggestions for illustrations by Horus Engels for the German edition of The Hobbit as "too Disnified",

Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of.
Letter 107

He was sceptical of the emerging fandom in the United States, and in 1954 he returned proposals for the dust jackets of the American edition of The Lord of the Rings:

Thank you for sending me the projected 'blurbs', which I return. The Americans are not as a rule at all amenable to criticism or correction; but I think their effort is so poor that I feel constrained to make some effort to improve it.
Letter 144

And in 1958, in an irritated reaction to a proposed movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings by Morton Grady Zimmerman:

I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about.
Letter 207

He went on to criticise the script scene by scene ("yet one more scene of screams and rather meaningless slashings"). But Tolkien was in principle open to the idea of a movie adaptation. He sold the film, stage and merchandise rights of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to United Artists in 1969, while, guided by scepticism towards future productions, he forbade Disney should ever be involved:

It might be advisable [...] to let the Americans do what seems good to them — as long as it was possible [...] to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).
Letter 13

United Artists never made a film, though at least John Boorman was planning to make a film in the early seventies. It would have been a live-action film, which apparently would have been much more to Tolkien's liking than an animated film. In 1976 the rights were sold to Saul Zaentz, who in turn formed Tolkien Enterprises, now named Middle-earth Enterprises, a division of its company, and the first movie adaptation (an animated rotoscoping film) of The Lord of the Rings appeared only after Tolkien's death (in 1978, directed by Ralph Bakshi). The screenplay was written by the fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle. This first adaptation, however, only contained the first half of the story that is The Lord of the Rings. In 1977 an animated TV production of The Hobbit was made by Rankin/Bass, and in 1980 the company produced an animated film titled The Return of the King, which covered some of the portion of The Lord of the Rings that Bakshi was unable to complete. In 2001-3 The Lord of the Rings was filmed in full and as a live-action film as a trilogy of films by Peter Jackson. A decade later, Jackson proceeded with The Hobbit, envisioned as a prequel trilogy.

In 2019 it was produced and released by Fox Searchlight Pictures a film about the life of J.R.R. Tolkien in his youth, with Tolkien himself being portrayed by Nicholas Hoult and Harry Gilby.

Bibliography[edit | edit source]

For a complete list of all of Tolkien's published writings, see Writings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Fictional and poetic works[edit | edit source]

Academic works[edit | edit source]

Posthumous publications[edit | edit source]

1975—1990[edit | edit source]

1990—today[edit | edit source]

Artwork[edit | edit source]

Audio recordings[edit | edit source]

Note: for a detailed listing of all recordings of Tolkien, see Audio recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien

Awards[edit | edit source]

This list contains awards or recognitions given to J.R.R. Tolkien, it does not include awards given to his individual publications.

  • D. Lit., in University College, Dublin (1954)
  • Commander of Order of the British Empire (1972)
  • Doctorate of Letters by Oxford University (1972)
  • 6th "best postwar British writer" (The Times, 2008) [1]

One year after his death, Tolkien was the inaugural winner of the 1974 Gandalf Grand Master Award for life achievement in fantasy writing (the award itself named after his creation, Gandalf). In 1978 The Silmarillion won the first of the two Gandalf Award for Book-Length Fantasy.

Names and pseudonyms[edit | edit source]

JRRT's monogram

In a letter to written by Arthur Tolkien his family after Tolkien's birth he describes the inspiration behind Tolkien's name:

"The boy’s first name will be ‘John’ after its grandfather, probably John Ronald Reuel altogether. Mab wants to call it Ronald and I want to keep up John and Reuel." Ronald had no familial precedent but Reuel was Arthur's middle name.[5]

Family Tree[edit | edit source]

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mabel Suffield
 
Arthur Reuel Tolkien
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Edith Bratt
 
J.R.R. Tolkien
 
Hilary Tolkien
 
Magdalen Matthews
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
John Tolkien
 
Michael Tolkien
 
Christopher Tolkien
 
Priscilla Tolkien


See also[edit | edit source]

Further reading[edit | edit source]

A small selection of books about Tolkien and his works:

External links[edit | edit source]

Notes

  1. Christopher Tolkien suffered from a heart ailment.
  2. It is not clear what he meant by this; possibly he understood the world as a struggle between people and elements who create beauty and do good; and those people or forces who defile and destroy nature or the "elves's" works.

References

  1. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 165, (undated, written June 1955)
  2. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 324, (dated 4-5 June 1971)
  3. Ryszard Derdziński, Z Prus do Anglii. Saga rodziny J. R. R. Tolkiena
  4. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 349, (dated 8 March 1973)
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, "II. 1892-1916: Early years"
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 163, (dated 7 June 1955)
  7. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 43, (dated 6-8 March 1941)
  8. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 306, (undated, late 1967 - early 1968)
  9. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 1, (dated October 1914)
  10. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 3, (dated 26 November 1915)
  11. Bill Cater, "We talked of love, death and fairy tales" dated 4 December 2001, (accessed 13 January 2024)
  12. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 340, (dated 11 July 1972)
  13. Peter M. Gilliver, At the Wordface: J.R.R. Tolkien's Work on the Oxford English Dictionary, Mythlore, volume 21, issue 2
  14. 14.0 14.1 Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, "III. 1917-1925: The making of a mythology", "Oxford Interlude"
  15. 15.0 15.1 15.2 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 7, (dated 27 June 1935)
  16. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 46, (dated 26 November 1941)
  17. Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond (2006), The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: I. Chronology, "1921"
  18. Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, "Northern venture"
  19. 19.0 19.1 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 17, (dated 15 October 1937)
  20. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 15, (dated 31 August 1937)
  21. 21.0 21.1 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 294, (dated 8 February 1967)
  22. Patrick Ringwalk, The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian
  23. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 9, (dated 4 January 1937)
  24. 24.0 24.1 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 105, (dated 21 July 1946)
  25. 25.0 25.1 25.2 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 35, (dated 2 February 1939)
  26. 26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3 Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion
  27. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, "Foreword to the Second Edition"
  28. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 47, (dated 7 December 1941)
  29. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 133, (dated 22 June 1952)
  30. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. 32
  31. J.R.R. Tolkien; Letter to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (December 1959)
  32. J.R.R. Tolkien; Letter to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (20–26 January 1964)
  33. J.R.R. Tolkien; Letters to Przemyslaw Mroczkowski (unknown date)
  34. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 287, (dated 10 May 1966)
  35. 35.0 35.1 Pieter Collier, "Here is your chance to own a piece of Tolkien history" dated 9 July 2008, TolkienLibrary.com (accessed 19 March 2024)
  36. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 305, (dated 26 June 1968)
  37. Rodney Legg, "Tolkien in Bournemouth and Dorset" dated 1 November 2009, Dorset Life (accessed 19 March 2024)
  38. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 333, (dated 16 March 1972)
  39. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 16, (dated 3 October 1937)
  40. Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, "JRR Tolkien: 'Film my books? It's easier to film The Odyssey'" dated 19 April 2016, The Telegraph (accessed 26 January 2020)
  41. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 58, (dated 3 April 1944)
  42. Clyde S. Kilby, Tolkien and the Silmarillion (1976), p. 24
  43. J.R.R. Tolkien; Letter to Nancy Smith (Christmas 1963)
  44. J.R.R. Tolkien; Letter to Maria Mroczkowska
  45. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 225, (dated 10 December 1960)
  46. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 219, (dated 14 October 1959)
  47. J.R.R. Tolkien; Letter to Richard Lupoff
  48. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. 43, quoting a letter of Christopher Tolkien
  49. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 199, (dated 24 June 1957)
  50. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 282, (dated 18 December 1965)
  51. Richard C. West, "A Letter from Father Murray", Tolkien Studies 16, pp. 135-6
  52. Patrick Curry, Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien: Myth and Modernity, p. 47
  53. J.R.R. Tolkien, Baillie Tolkien (ed.), Letters from Father Christmas
  54. J.R.R. Tolkien; Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond (eds.), Roverandom
  55. J.R.R. Tolkien, Smith of Wootton Major
  56. J.R.R. Tolkien, Farmer Giles of Ham
  57. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Tree and Leaf
  58. "The Big Read", BBC (accessed 30 January 2024)
  59. "100 Greatest Britons (BBC Poll, 2002)", (accessed 30 January 2024)
  60. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p. 133
  61. 61.0 61.1 Arden R. Smith, Patrick Wynne, "Tolkien and Esperanto", in SEVEN, Volume 17, p. 29
  62. Arden R. Smith, "Writing Systems", tolkienestate.com (accessed 27 December 2016)
  63. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p. 141
  64. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 4, (dated 2 March 1916)
  65. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 144, (dated 25 April 1954)
  66. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 144, (dated 25 April 1954)
  67. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), Sauron Defeated, "Part Two: The Notion Club Papers Part One: Notes"
  68. J.R.R. Tolkien; A Secret Vice
  69. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 180, (dated 14 January 1956)
  70. J.R.R. Tolkien; Dimitra Fimi, Andrew Higgins (eds.), A Secret Vice, p. 40-1 [note 19];
  71. John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, "Part One: The immortal four", p. 19
  72. 72.0 72.1 72.2 J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 309, (dated 2 January 1969)
  73. J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 272, (dated 20 July 1965)
J.R.R. Tolkien
None
Position created
President of The Tolkien Society
27 June 1972 - In perpetuo
Followed by:
None; perpetual title


The Inklings
J.R.R. Tolkien · Owen Barfield · J.A.W. Bennett · Lord David Cecil · Nevill Coghill · James Dundas-Grant · Hugo Dyson · Adam Fox · Colin Hardie · Robert Havard · C.S. Lewis · Warren Lewis · Gervase Mathew · R.B. McCallum · C.E. Stevens · Christopher Tolkien · John Wain · Charles Williams · Charles Leslie Wrenn
Languages and scripts in Tolkien's works
Elvish Angerthas (Angerthas Daeron) · Avarin · Cirth (Certhas Daeron) · Common Eldarin · Mátengwië · Moon-letters · Nandorin · Primitive Quendian · Quenya (Exilic · Valinorean · Vanyarin) · Sarati · Silvan Elvish · Sindarin (Doriathrin · Falathrin · Númenórean · Mithrimin · Old) · Telerin (Common) · Tengwar
Mannish Adûnaic · Dalish · Drúadan · Dunlendish · Halethian · Northern Mannish · Pre-Númenórean · Rohanese · Taliska · Westron (Bucklandish · Hobbitish · Stoorish)
Dwarvish Angerthas (Erebor · Moria) · Aulëan · Iglishmêk · Khuzdul
Other Black Speech · Old Entish · Orkish · Valarin · Warg-language
Earlier legendarium Gnomish · Gnomic Letters · Gondolinic Runes · Ilkorin · Keladian · Noldorin (Kornoldorin) · Melkian · Oromëan · Qenya · Valmaric script
Outside the legendarium Animalic · Arktik · Goblin Alphabet · Mágol · Naffarin · New English Alphabet · Nevbosh · Privata Kodo Skauta
Real-world Celtic · English (Old · Middle · AB) · Finnish · Germanic · Gothic · Hebrew · Runic alphabet · Welsh
"A Secret Vice" (book) · "The Lhammas" · "The Tree of Tongues" · Sub-creation
The Tolkien Society
President: J.R.R. Tolkien · Vice-president: Priscilla Tolkien · Chair: Shaun Gunner
Topics History (Letter to Vera Chapman and the Tolkien Society) · Archives · Awards · Enyalië · Smials · Tolkien to the World · Tolkien fandom
Chairs Vera Chapman (1970) · Keith Bridges (1970-1973) · Hartley Patterson (1973-1974) · Jonathan Simons (1974-1984) · Brin Dunsire (1984-1988) · Alex Lewis (1988-1992) · Amanda Fingleson (1992-1996) · Chris Crawshaw (1996-2008) · Matthew Vernon (2008-2009) · Sally Kennett (2009-2013) · Shaun Gunner (2013-present)
Annual Events Birthday Toast (3 January) · Tolkien Reading Day (25 March) · AGM and Springmoot (April) · Seminar (July) · Oxonmoot (September)
Conferences Oxonmoot (annual, 1974-present) · J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference (1992) · Tolkien 2005: The Ring Goes Ever On (2005) · The Return of the Ring (2012) · Tolkien 2019 (2019)
Publications Journals Belladonna's Broadsheet (1969-1970) · Mallorn (1970-present) · The Tolkien Society Bulletin (1970-1971) · Andúril (1972) · Amon Hen (1972-present) · Quettar (1980-1995)
Books An Extrapolation on The Silmarillion (1975) · The Trees, the Jewels and the Rings (1977) · Tolkien in Oxford: The Tolkien Society Guide (1978) · The Tolkien Society Songbook (1985) · Tolkien and Romanticism (1988) · Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference (1995) · The Oxonmoot Songbook (1997) · The Filking Songbook (2001) · The Tolkien Society Guide to Oxford (2005) · Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference (2008) · Tolkien 2005 Souvenir Book (2009) · Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Conference 2012 (2016)
Peter Roe Books 1. Some Light on Middle-earth (1985) · 2. Leaves from the Tree (1991) · 3. The First and Second Ages (1992) · 4. Travel and Communication in Tolkien's Worlds (1996) · 5. Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees, vol. 1 (1997) · 6. Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees, vol. 2 (1998) · 7. Tolkien, the Sea and Scandinavia (1999) · 8. The Ways of Creative Mythologies (2000) · 9. Tolkien: A Mythology for England? (2000) · 10. The Best of Amon Hen, vol. 1 (2000) · 11. Digging Potatoes, Growing Trees, vol. 3 (2001) · 12. Sindarin Lexicon (2001) · 13. The Best of Amon Hen, vol. 2 (2002) · 14. Tolkien: Influenced and Influencing (2005)· 15. Freedom, Fate and Choice in Middle-earth (2012) · 16. Journeys & Destinations (2015) · 17. Death and Immortality in Middle-earth (2017) · 18. Poetry and Song in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (2018) · 19. Tolkien the Pagan? (2019) · 20. Adapting Tolkien (2021) · 21. Twenty-first Century Receptions of Tolkien (2022) · 22. Tolkien and Diversity (2023)
Illustrators of The Hobbit
Internal art J.R.R. Tolkien (1937-present) · Eric Fraser (The Folio Society: 1979, 1992-present) · Michael Hague (1984-1992) · David T. Wenzel (graphic novel: 1989-present) · Alan Lee (1997-present) · David Wyatt (1998-2001, 2012-2013) · John Howe (pop-up: 1999) · Jemima Catlin (2013-present)
Cover art only J.R.R. Tolkien (1937-present) · Pauline Baynes (1961) · Roger Garland (1987-1989) · John Howe (1991-present) · Ted Nasmith (1989-1991) · Barbara Remington (1965 US)
Illustrators of The Lord of the Rings
Internal art J.R.R. Tolkien (1937-present) · Eric Fraser/Ingahild Grathmer (The Folio Society: 1979, 1992-present) · Alan Lee (1997-present)
Cover art only J.R.R. Tolkien (1937-present) · Pauline Baynes (1970-1989) · Roger Garland (1983-1991) · John Howe (1991-present) · Ted Nasmith (1990) · Geoff Taylor (1999)
Illustrators of The Silmarillion
Internal art Francis Mosley (The Folio Society: 1997-present)· Ted Nasmith (1998-present)
Cover art only J.R.R. Tolkien (1937-present) · Roger Garland (1983-1991) · John Howe (1992-1995)
Illustrators of official Tolkien calendars
Emily Austin (2023) · Pauline Baynes (1973, 1974) · Cor Blok (2011, 2012) · Jemima Catlin (2014) · Jenny Dolfen (2023) · Inger Edelfeldt (1985) · Mary Fairburn (2015) · Roger Garland (1984, 1987, 1988, 1989) · Spiros Gelekas (2023) · Justin Gerard (2023) · Donato Giancola (2023) · Michael Hague (1986) · The Brothers Hildebrandt (1976 US, 1977 US, 1978 US) · John Howe (1987, 1988, 1991, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2013, 2021) · Tove Jansson (2016) · Michael Kaluta (1994) · Tim Kirk (1975) · Alan Lee (1987, 1993, 1999, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024) · Ted Nasmith (1987, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2021, 2022) · Kip Rasmussen (2023) · Darrell Sweet (1982) · J.R.R. Tolkien (1973, 1974, 1976 UK, 1977 UK, 1978 UK, 1979, 2005, 2006, 2017)
A J.R.R. Tolkien book guide
Books by or mainly by Tolkien
Of Arda Authored by
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit · The Lord of the Rings
(i.The Fellowship of the Ring · ii.The Two Towers · iii.The Return of the King) ·
The Road Goes Ever On · Bilbo's Last Song
Edited by Christopher Tolkien The Silmarillion · Unfinished Tales · The History of Middle-earth series
(i.The Book of Lost Tales: Part One · ii.The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two · iii.The Lays of Beleriand · iv.The Shaping of Middle-earth · v.The Lost Road and Other Writings · vi.The Return of the Shadow · vii.The Treason of Isengard · viii.The War of the Ring · ix.Sauron Defeated · x.Morgoth's Ring · xi.The War of the Jewels · xii.The Peoples of Middle-earth · Index) ·
The Children of Húrin · Beren and Lúthien · The Fall of Gondolin
Edited by others The Annotated Hobbit · The History of The Hobbit · The Nature of Middle-earth ·
The Fall of Númenor · The Maps of Middle-earth
Not of Arda Short stories
and poems
Leaf by Niggle · Farmer Giles of Ham · Smith of Wootton Major · The Adventures of Tom Bombadil ·
Letters from Father Christmas · Mr. Bliss · Roverandom ·
Tree and Leaf (compilation) · Tales from the Perilous Realm (compilation)
Fictional works The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún · The Fall of Arthur · The Story of Kullervo · The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun
Translations and academic works Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo · Finn and Hengest ·
The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays · Beowulf and the Critics · Tolkien On Fairy-stories ·
Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary · A Secret Vice · The Battle of Maldon
Collected letters and poems The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien · The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien
Edited old texts A Middle English Vocabulary · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight · Ancrene Wisse · The Old English Exodus
Books by other authors
Biographies J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography · The Inklings · Tolkien and the Great War
Reference works The Complete Guide to Middle-earth · The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide
Scholarly studies The Road to Middle-earth · The Keys of Middle-earth · The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion ·
The Ring of Words · A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien · Tolkien's Lost Chaucer ·
Tolkien's Library · Tolkien on Chaucer, 1913-1959
Scholarly journals Tolkien Studies · (The Chronology)
Other works by Tolkien
Linguistic journals Vinyar Tengwar various issues · Parma Eldalamberon issue 11-22
Collections of artwork
and manuscripts
Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien · J.R.R. Tolkien: Life and Legend · J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator ·
The Art of The Hobbit · The Art of The Lord of the Rings · Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth ·
Tolkien: Treasures · J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript
This list is only a selection of works, for a fuller bibliography of Tolkien see here or here. See also a timeline.