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Tolkien's World
Tolkien RPG
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J.R.R. Tolkien
Biography John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in South Africa. His father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien died when he was young. His mother brought him and his brother back to England and to live in the small English town of Sarehole. As he grew, Tolkien showed a penchant for languages and under his mother's tutelage, studied Latin and French. An avid reader, he especially loved fairy tales with the story of Sigurd, the dragon slayer, as his favorite. Tolkien became fascinated with the study of languages. After his teachers introduced him to Anglo-Saxon or Old English, he read heroic tales like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (which he would translate into modern English later in his life). Then he turned to Old Norse and the Norse Sagas. Then he began to invent his own languages and alphabets and then developed his own histories for his languages. Not surprisingly, Tolkien went to Oxford University to study philology. He would later find a Finnish grammar book (which made him fascinated with Finnish mythology) that had made his imagination soar. He then began to make a new language based on Finnish (he called it his "mad hobby"). He believed that a language couldn't exist without the people who speak it. Tolkien decided that this new language is spoken by a race of elves that he had already created in the poetry he had written. This poetry was to form the basis of the mythology of the land called Middle-Earth. Just as his new languages were based on actual languages, his new mythology had also incorporated elements from various real mythology. When World War I started, Tolkien entered in the British army as an officer. But before going off to war, he married his childhood sweetheart Edith Bratt whom he fell in love when he was 16 and she was 19. But their guardians (both were orphaned) forbade the two to meet until Tolkien turned 21. He later incorporated this long separation in his stories as the basis of the romance between Aragorn and Arwen. Tolkien was sent to France, where he took part in the 1916 Battle of the Somme. The slaughter of thousands of young British soldiers would leave a lasting impression on Tolkien. Tolkien then contracted a particularly bad case of trench fever and was shipped back to England in late 1916. He spend the time during his recovery working on his mythology. When the war ended in late 1918, he found out that all of his close friends except for one, had died. This was a great blow to Tolkien as had made him realize the inevitability of death. Tolkien slowly returned to academic life. He moved though a series of university positions until he was elected to a professorship at Oxford. He published several scholarly works and won the respect in his particular field. But he still continued his work on his own mythology. By this time, he developed several new languages, a complex history and history for the various races that spoke his languages. But nothing yet to arouse interest from others. One day while sitting at his desk grading papers, Tolkien came across a blank page. He wrote on it, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." His invention of the short but jolly hobbits would turn his mythology around. After almost ten years, he completed "The Hobbit", which was published in 1937 as a children's book. It was met with great enthusiasm and we given several awards including the New York Herald Tribune prize as the year's best children's book. At the request of his publishers, he started on a sequel to The Hobbit. Though the publishers wanted him to write another children's book, it was soon apparent that the next one will surpass The Hobbit in depth as well in length. When "The Lord of the Rings" was given to his publishers, they thought that it was indeed a work of genius but will probably be a commercial flop. But when the first installment "The Fellowship of the Ring" was published in 1954, its sales increased in a phenomenal rate. The two other books, "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King", followed sooner than expected because of the demand. Though the critics were divided on Tolkien's work, "The Lord of the Rings" was awarded a prize for the best fantasy book for the year 1956. Tolkien's book soon developed a wide followers especially on college campuses in the US in the 1960s. Tolkien retired from teaching in 1958. He had published several more small works of fiction but his effort went mostly on his mythology, which he still have hopes of publishing. But it will be a monumental task given the assortment of manuscripts he hoarded, some even dating back to his college days. These manuscripts contained new or other version of his mythology, with some contradictions, gaps and conflicts that needed to be ironed out. This work remained unfinished at Tolkien's death in 1973. The job of finishing the book was taken on by his son Christopher, who edited and compiled the manuscripts until it became a coherent history of Middle-Earth, spanning from its creation up to the events in "The Lord of the Rings". This book, "The Silmarillion" was published in 1977. Recently, the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien published some of Tolkien's manuscripts in the form of a series of books edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher. The first of these are "The Unfinished Tales" and "The Lost Tales", Parts 1 and 2, with more books to on the way. Also, with the new "The Lord of the Rings" movie now being made, it seems that Tolkien's legacy is certain to live on to future generations. Tolkien's Selected Works Fiction: Poetry: Non-fiction: Published Works after Tolkien's Death
(edited by Christopher Tolkien): References
Foster, Robert. The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth. Ballantine Books, 1978. |
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1937 The Hobbit