Fisk Mauá

J.R.R. Tolkien

Victor Martins

Teacher Mariza Araki

November / 2012
 INTRODUCTION

In this project I’m going to present to you the life of the author John Ronald Reuel
Tolkien well-known for his books: The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings trilogy, Silmarillion,
among others. This biography contains the principal facts of his life, focusing on the happenings
that influenced his writing. From childhood until his death, all the facts that had importance in
his life will be shown.
Choosing to write about Tolkien was my decision because I wanted to learn more about
the author, once I knew only his books and nothing about him. I searched for information about
his life in several sources to prepare this project.
I hope that people can understand Tolkien’s writing style better by reading his life story.
Some people stop or don’t even start reading the books because they don’t understand the
objective of so much poetry and eccentric vocabulary. I hope to change this view a little with
my research about his life.
 BIOGRAPHY

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892 - 1973) was a major scholar of English language and
twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. Despite his academic career, he is
most famous for his stories, he wrote the best-sellers The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and
Silmarillion.
Tolkien was the first son of Mabel Suffield and Arthur Reuel Tolkien, a British bank
clerk who went to South Africa in the 1890s for better chances. On January 3 rd, John Ronald
was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa.
On February 15th, 1896, just a month after John’s fourth birthday, his father died
suddenly, and he went to Birmingham with his mother and his younger brother, Hilary Arthur
Reuel Tolkien. Due to his father’s death, Tolkien became the oldest man in the family, a father-
figure to his younger brother in a place he didn’t know.
The children were brought up by their mother, and she was the responsible to encourage
Tolkien to the world of reading and writing, therefore she was his first teacher. In 1900, Mabel
and her sister May, were received into the Roman Catholic Church and the Tolkien brothers
were educated in this religion. The priest who visited the family regularly was Father Francis
Morgan.
Mabel died in 1904 from complications of diabetes, leaving the two brothers alone.
Father Francis guaranteed the children’s well-being, although they lived with their aunt-in-law
Beatrice Suffield and then with a Mrs. Faulkner.
Ronald showed very early his linguistic talent, by the time that he was at King Edward’s
School he had mastered Latin and Greek and became very competent in other languages. At his
later years, Tolkien met regularly after hours with his friends of T.C.B.S. (Tea Club of the
Barrovian Society) to study fantasy stories, like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The tea club was established by Tolkien, Christopher Wiseman, Rob Gilson and G.B. Smith.
The knowledge that Tolkien acquired on this study had a large influence in his work.
One of the poems he found when he worked with old English was Christ of Cynewulf, along
with the quotation:
“Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast
Ofer middangeard monnum sended”

- “Hail Earendel brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men.

("Middangeard" was an ancient expression for the everyday world between
Heaven above and Hell below.)”
 He entered Exeter College, Oxford in 1911 to study languages and literature, achieved a
first-class degree in June 1915. By this time he had already met Edith Bratt, she was a lodgers at
Mrs. Faulkner’s boarding house. Their relationship deepened and they married in Warwick on
22 March 1916.
By the time which Tolkien graduated at Oxford, he was working on his first texts,
including the journeys of Earendil, The Mariner. Many of these stories were written in his
invented languages, the Qenya for instance, which was very influenced by Finnish.
When war began, Tolkien enlisted in the Fusiliers and was kept in suspense in
Staffordshire, until he was sent to active duty on the Somme offensive at France. After four
months on these trench battles he succumbed to “trench fever”, and was sent back to England
and to his wife Edith. In these two months which he stayed in the hospital, he put his stories into
shape; he used to write in a handbook called by him The Book of Lost Tales, where the stories of
the Silmarillion appeared in their first form.
The war news came and two of Tolkien friends from the T.C.B.S. were killed in action,
Rob Gilson and G.B. Smith. They kept in touch after school, and even checked each other’s
works. These happenings influenced his stories, including death as an important theme in his
work.
The next two years were, for Tolkien, to recover from illness. Meanwhile he made
home service for the army and was promoted lieutenant and stayed in Hull with Edith. She was
his inspiration for the tale of Beren and Lúthien, a tale from his The Book of Lost Tales. Lúthien
Tinúviel was an elf woman who sacrificed her eternal lifetime to live as a mortal with her love,
the human Beren. In that same year, Edith gave birth to their first child, John Francis Reuel
Tolkien, was born on November 16th, 1917.
When the war came to its end, Tolkien was appointed Lexicographer Assistant on the
preparation of the New English Dictionary, his first academic job. He had been working at this
job for 2 years when he was nominated for Associate Professor in English Language at the
University of Leeds.
His next two children were born while Tolkien was working at Leeds. Michael Hilary
Reuel Tolkien was born in 1920 and Christopher Reuel Tolkien in 1924.
Between the classes and all the work at Leeds, Tolkien collaborated with E. V. Gordon
on the famous edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, besides his refining of The Book of
Lost Tales and the “Elvish” languages.
In 1925 Tolkien finally became a Professor at the Oxford University and started
teaching Anglo-Saxon, and after, English language and Literature. He stayed there until 1959,
when he retired. In those years Tolkien wrote several scholarly publications, “Beowulf, the
Monsters and Critics” for instance.
 Priscilla Tolkien, his last child, was born in 1929, completing the Tolkien family. A
year after, Tolkien entered “The Inklings”, a Literature group discussion associated to the
University. There Tolkien met C. S. Lewis, who would become one of his closest friends, and
helped him revising his writings.
One day, Tolkien was correcting some examination tests when he noticed that one of
the students had left a blank page on the answer sheets. On that page he wrote – “In a hole in the
ground there lived a hobbit”, from that moment Tolkien felt the need to figure out what a hobbit
was, what the hole looked like, and why it lived in a hole. Therefore, Tolkien wrote a tale and
told his children, and that book was published under the title of The Hobbit in 1937 by George
Allen &Unwin. The book had an unexpected success and was printed several times in many
languages.
After this, both the publisher and the public wanted more from the story, and Stanley
Unwin from George Allen &Unwin, asked Tolkien more material for publishing. At this time,
The Book of Lost Tales was already organized and titled Quenta Silmarillion, or the short form,
Silmarillion and that was the material chosen by Tolkien to present to Stanley. The feedback
was mixed, a disliking of the poetry and an approval for the prose. Consequently, the decision
made was not to publish this material, and Stanley asked Tolkien to write a sequel to The
Hobbit.
Unlike the first book, this one became more complex, resulting in the 16-year-story The
Lord of The Rings, published in three parts during 1954 and 1955, The Fellowship of the Ring,
The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
The sales exceeded what they had expected. Therefore the books were launched on a
12-episode radio adaptation in 1956. In 1965 a pirate paperback version of The Lord of The
Rings came out and the sales increased enormously, because a lot of people found out about the
series. Nowadays, The Lord of The Rings has already been translated into 34 languages and sold
more than 50 million books.
Because of the popularity of the book, Tolkien’s name became worldly famous but this
brought more concerns than happiness for the author, because he needed to deal with the fans
calling him late at night to ask whether Frodo had succeeded or failed in his quest. So, after his
retirement in 1959, he moved to Bournemouth with Edith.
Even after his retirement, Tolkien published other writings, such as Smith of Wootton
Major and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
Edith Tolkien died in 1971, after 55 years of marriages. After this, Tolkien returned to
Oxford where he stayed until his death.
In 1972 Tolkien received two very important honors: The first was from Oxford, and
the second, from the Queen Elizabeth. Then he became Sir John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
 A year after, The Sunday Times wrote in its early edition:
“2nd September, 1973. London. J.R.R. Tolkien, philologist, scholar
and successful writer died today in Bournemouth. He was eighty
one years old…”
- The Sunday Times

Tolkien and Edith had four children: John Francis Reuel Tolkien was ordained priest in
1957, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien taught Classics at Stoneyhurst College, Christopher John
Reuel Tolkien followed in his father’s steps at writing, and Priscilla Anne Reuel Tolkien made
social service most of her life.
After his father’s death, Christopher Tolkien reunited the materials from the Middle-
Earth Legendarium and published the titles: Silmarillion, which tells the story of the creation of
the world and its history since the beginning, The History of Middle-Earth, twelve volumes of a
large research on his father’s creation, Unfinished Tales, a selection of incomplete writings and
The Children of Húrin, an extended story from one of the Silmarillion chapters.
 CONCLUSION

My first contact with Tolkien’s world was when the first movie, The Fellowship of The
Ring, came out, I watched a story which I had never heard about and loved it. I got sad when
Gandalf died, and I kept my fingers crossed for Frodo when he decided to take the Quest on his
own. But my best rooting was always for Aragorn, the man born to be a king, an honored,
upright and brave character, with a strong personality.

This story has influenced me, as it has influenced a lot of people around the world for
its details. These details written by Tolkien transport the reader inside the story, you can
practically feel the fear in your skin when Frodo and Sam reach Mordor and see that devastated
land. Tolkien created a whole world with all the history, geography, geology, religions and
languages. Those two books he wrote, The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, only brought this
world to life. Therefore, the fans can only know about this by reading the other books, edited by
Christopher Tolkien, Silmarillion and History of the Middle-Earth.

When I got to know about the other books and all his impressive work, I was curious
about who that person was, whose genius mind was capable to create all this wonderful
material. All the things which inspired him to write those words which have inspired a lot of
people years after, this led me to search about him. Therefore, I found out about a man with a
huge knowledge about literature and fantasy whose books were written only when he was
mature enough to do it and was sure that he could do a good job.

Tolkien is highly accepted as the father of the High Fantasy genre, but his personal
writing style is characterized by an old-fashioned vocabulary and structure, a graceful and
elegant storytelling. Poetry is another element found among his skills, several poems and songs
had their space in the pages of Tolkien’s books. All these poetry is a charming detail and
enchanted me when I read the books. It helped my understanding of the background history in
an amusing way and it is a good point in the books.

I am, obviously, not the only one who was seduced by this style once he has got
millions of fans all around the world.
 REFERENCES

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Tolkien
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Priscilla_Tolkien
http://www.councilofelrond.com/tolkienbiography/michael-hilary-reuel-tolkien/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_family

Accessed in October 2012.