J. R. R. Tolkien Biography Quotes 13 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State (now South Africa), to Arthur Reuel Tolkien, a bank manager, and Mabel Suffield Tolkien. He had a younger brother, Hilary. Mabel brought her sons to England in 1895 for a visit; Arthur remained in South Africa and died there in 1896. The family settled in the English Midlands, chiefly in and around Birmingham, where the countryside and village lanes around Sarehole impressed the boy with images he later transmuted into the landscapes of his fiction.

Mabel converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900, a decision that isolated her from relatives but formed the core of her sons' religious upbringing. She died in 1904, leaving John Ronald and Hilary under the guardianship of Father Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory, who became a stabilizing presence and mentor. Tolkien's devout Catholic faith, kindled by his mother and reinforced by Father Morgan, remained central throughout his life.

Education and Formative Years
Tolkien attended King Edward's School in Birmingham and, for a time, St Philip's Grammar School. A gifted linguist, he developed a fascination for philology, inventing imaginary languages and studying Latin, Greek, Gothic, Finnish, and Welsh. In 1911 he entered Exeter College, Oxford, first reading Classics and then English Language and Literature, where he gravitated toward Old and Middle English. His academic promise was clear even before his undergraduate days ended.

During his school years he joined a close circle of friends known as the TCBS (Tea Club and Barrovian Society), including Robert Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith, and Christopher Wiseman. Their shared passion for literature and ideas fortified Tolkien's early aspirations as a poet and myth-maker.

War, Loss, and Marriage
Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers during World War I, Tolkien served as a signals officer on the Western Front. He saw action during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, where the carnage and the deaths of friends, including Gilson and Bache Smith of the TCBS, left a deep mark. In October 1916 he contracted trench fever and was invalided back to England, spending much of the remainder of the war recovering and on home service.

On 22 March 1916 he married Edith Mary Bratt, whom he had met in his teens. Their enduring partnership helped sustain him through the war and his early career. They had four children: John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla. Edith's quiet support and the domestic rhythms of family life provided the milieu in which many of his early stories were told to his children.

Academic Career and Philology
After the war Tolkien worked briefly on the Oxford English Dictionary, then in 1920 joined the University of Leeds as a lecturer, later Reader. At Leeds he forged a fruitful collaboration with E. V. Gordon, producing an influential edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In 1925 he returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, a post he held until 1945. His scholarship included seminal work on Beowulf; his 1936 lecture, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, transformed modern understanding of the poem.

From 1945 to 1959 he served as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. His students and colleagues knew him as an exacting teacher and a meticulous scholar whose love of language was inseparable from his creative imagination.

The Inklings and Literary Friendships
At Oxford Tolkien became a central figure in the Inklings, an informal literary group that met for readings and conversation. Among its most prominent members were C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and Hugo Dyson. Tolkien and Lewis shared drafts and engaged in vigorous debate, and Tolkien's conversations with Lewis contributed to Lewis's journey to Christian belief. Although their tastes sometimes diverged, the friendship was crucial to the development and encouragement of Tolkien's fiction.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien began The Hobbit as a tale for his children; the manuscript reached the publisher George Allen & Unwin through a reader's report by the young Rayner Unwin, whose father, Stanley Unwin, ran the firm. Published in 1937, the book's success prompted the publisher to request a sequel. The project grew into The Lord of the Rings, composed over more than a decade, with parts read aloud to the Inklings as it evolved.

The Lord of the Rings appeared in three volumes between 1954 and 1955: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Drawing on his constructed languages, deep knowledge of Northern European myth, and a lifetime of philological study, Tolkien created a secondary world, Middle-earth, that combined epic scope with moral gravity. Illustrator Pauline Baynes collaborated with Tolkien on related works and maps, helping shape the visual reception of his stories.

Languages, Myth, and Faith
From adolescence Tolkien had invented languages, notably Quenya and Sindarin, which became the heart of his legendarium. He built histories, genealogies, and myths to give these tongues a living context, a process he described as sub-creation. His Catholic faith informed his moral vision, suffusing his narratives with themes of providence, fall, sacrifice, and eucatastrophe, a sudden joyous turn that restores hope without denying suffering.

Later Years and Recognition
As The Lord of the Rings found a global readership in the 1960s, public attention increasingly intruded on Tolkien's private life. In 1968 he and Edith moved to Bournemouth for quieter surroundings. Queen Elizabeth II appointed him a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972, recognizing his contributions to literature. Edith died on 29 November 1971; Tolkien, bereft but sustained by family and friends, continued to revise and organize his manuscripts.

He died on 2 September 1973 in Bournemouth after a short illness. Both he and Edith are buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, where their shared gravestone bears the names Beren and Luthien, a testament to a lifelong love that echoed through his mythology.

Posthumous Publications and Legacy
Tolkien left a vast archive of drafts, linguistic notes, and narratives concerning the earlier ages of Middle-earth. His son Christopher Tolkien dedicated decades to editing and publishing this material, including The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), and the multi-volume History of Middle-earth. Through these efforts, readers gained insight into the depth of Tolkien's world-building and the evolution of his creative process.

J. R. R. Tolkien's life wove together scholarship, language, faith, friendship, and family. The people closest to him, Mabel and Father Francis in youth; Edith and their children in adulthood; and companions such as C. S. Lewis, E. V. Gordon, and the Inklings, formed the human context of a body of work that reshaped modern fantasy and continues to invite readers into a world made with uncommon care and remembered with enduring affection.

Our collection contains 13 quotes who is written by R. R. Tolkien, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Motivational - Wisdom - Poetry - Sarcastic.

Other people realated to R. R. Tolkien: Ralph Bakshi (Director), Lord Dunsany (Novelist), R. A. Salvatore (Author), Terry Brooks (Writer), Brian Sibley (Writer), Austin Farrer (Theologian)