Certainly his father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, considered himself nothing if not English. Arthur was a bank clerk, and went to South Africa in the s for better prospects of promotion. There he was joined by his bride, Mabel Suffield, whose family were not only English through and through, but West Midlands since time immemorial. His memories of Africa were slight but vivid, including a scary encounter with a large hairy spider, and influenced his later writing to some extent; slight, because on 15 February his father died, and he, his mother and his younger brother Hilary returned to England — or more particularly, the West Midlands.
Housman it is also just across the border from Wales. Then they moved to the somewhat more pleasant Birmingham suburb of Edgbaston. However, in the meantime, something of profound significance had occurred, which estranged Mabel and her children from both sides of the family: in , together with her sister May, she was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
From then on, both Ronald and Hilary were brought up in the faith of Pio Nono, and remained devout Catholics throughout their lives. The parish priest who visited the family regularly was the half-Spanish half-Welsh Father Francis Morgan. Tolkien family life was generally lived on the genteel side of poverty.
However, the situation worsened in , when Mabel Tolkien was diagnosed as having diabetes, usually fatal in those pre-insulin days. She died on 14 November of that year leaving the two orphaned boys effectively destitute. By this time Ronald was already showing remarkable linguistic gifts.
He had mastered the Latin and Greek which was the staple fare of an arts education at that time, and was becoming more than competent in a number of other languages, both modern and ancient, notably Gothic, and later Finnish.
He was already busy making up his own languages, purely for fun. However, another complication had arisen.
When Ronald was 16, and she 19, they struck up a friendship, which gradually deepened. Eventually Father Francis took a hand, and forbade Ronald to see or even correspond with Edith for three years, until he was Ronald stoically obeyed this injunction to the letter.
In the summer of , he was invited to join a party on a walking holiday in Switzerland, which may have inspired his descriptions of the Misty Mountains, and of Rivendell. In the autumn of that year he went up to Exeter College, Oxford where he stayed, immersing himself in the Classics, Old English, the Germanic languages especially Gothic , Welsh and Finnish, until , when he swiftly though not without difficulty picked up the threads of his relationship with Edith.
As a result of this he changed his school from Classics to the more congenial English Language and Literature. One of the poems he discovered in the course of his Old English studies was the Crist of Cynewulf — he was amazed especially by the cryptic couplet:.
This inspired some of his very early and inchoate attempts at realising a world of ancient beauty in his versifying. In the summer of he took a job as tutor and escort to two Mexican boys in Dinard, France, a job which ended in tragedy. Meanwhile the relationship with Edith was going more smoothly. She converted to Catholicism and moved to Warwick, which with its spectacular castle and beautiful surrounding countryside made a great impression on Ronald.
However, as the pair were becoming ever closer, the nations were striving ever more furiously together, and war eventually broke out in August Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Tolkien did not rush to join up immediately on the outbreak of war, but returned to Oxford, where he worked hard and finally achieved a first-class degree in June At this time he was also working on various poetic attempts, and on his invented languages, especially one that he came to call Qenya [ sic ], which was heavily influenced by Finnish — but he still felt the lack of a connecting thread to bring his vivid but disparate imaginings together.
Tolkien finally enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers whilst working on ideas of Earendel [ sic ] the Mariner, who became a star, and his journeyings. For many months Tolkien was kept in boring suspense in England, mainly in Staffordshire. Finally it appeared that he must soon embark for France, and he and Edith married in Warwick on 22 March Eventually he was indeed sent to active duty on the Western Front, just in time for the Somme offensive.
Deep Elves, the later Noldor , with their languages Qenya and Goldogrin. Throughout and his illness kept recurring, although periods of remission enabled him to do home service at various camps sufficiently well to be promoted to lieutenant. It was when he was stationed in the Hull area that he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and there in a grove thick with hemlock Edith danced for him.
However, Tolkien did not stay in this job for long. In the summer of he applied for the quite senior post of Reader approximately, Associate Professor in English Language at the University of Leeds, and to his surprise was appointed. At Leeds as well as teaching he collaborated with E. Tolkien settled in England as a child, going on to study at Exeter College. The works have had a devoted international fan base and been adapted into award-winning blockbuster films.
After Arthur died from complications of rheumatic fever, Mabel settled with four-year-old Tolkien and his younger brother, Hilary, in the country hamlet of Sarehole, in Birmingham, England.
Mabel died in , and the Tolkien brothers were sent to live with a relative and in boarding homes, with a Catholic priest assuming guardianship in Birmingham. Tolkien went on to get his first-class degree at Exeter College, specializing in Anglo-Saxon and Germanic languages and classic literature.
Tolkien enlisted as a lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and served in World War I, making sure to continue writing as well. He fought in the Battle of the Somme, in which there were severe casualties, and was eventually released from duty due to illness. In the midst of his military service, he married Edith Bratt in Continuing his linguistic studies, Tolkien joined the faculty of the University of Leeds in and a few years later became a professor at Oxford University.
While there he started a writing group called The Inklings, which counted among its members C. Lewis and Owen Barfield. It was also at Oxford, while grading a paper, that he spontaneously wrote a short line about "a hobbit. He also created more than drawings to support the narrative.
Coronavirus remains a serious health risk. Please continue to follow national government advice. Arthur Tolkien's father, a music-seller and piano teacher, had moved from London to Birmingham in the early s. The Suffield family had been in Birmingham since Mabel's father John John Suffield ran the family drapery and hosiery store in central Birmingham.
Arthur Tolkien emigrated from Birmingham to South Africa in to gain promotion at work. His father had become a bank manager there.
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