J. R. R. Tolkien: The Life Behind Middle-earth

J. R. R. Tolkien is often called the father of modern fantasy, and The Lord of the Rings remains one of the most widely read books of the twentieth century. But Tolkien did not think of himself mainly as a novelist. He was a scholar of old languages, and his stories grew out of that work.

His life explains a great deal about his books: the loss of his parents, a long and difficult courtship, the trenches of the First World War, and decades as an Oxford professor surrounded by ancient poetry. Here is that life, and how it found its way into Middle-earth.

An orphan from Bloemfontein

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State, now part of South Africa. He was English and always thought of himself as English. His father died in South Africa when Tolkien was about three.

His mother died in 1904, when he was twelve. Tolkien and his brother were left in the care of Father Francis Xavier Morgan, a priest of the Birmingham Oratory, who raised them as Catholics. Tolkien's faith remained central to his life.

Edith

As a teenager, Tolkien met Edith Bratt, another orphan, and fell in love. Father Morgan opposed the relationship and forbade contact until Tolkien turned 21. Tolkien obeyed, and on his 21st birthday he wrote to her.

They married on 22 March 1916. Their love story found its way into his mythology as the tale of Beren, a mortal man, and Lúthien, an elf maiden, a story of love that overcomes every obstacle, including death itself.

The war

Months after his wedding, Tolkien was serving with the Lancashire Fusiliers on the Western Front, and he fought in the Battle of the Somme. In October 1916 he caught trench fever and was sent home.

Several of his closest school friends, members of a small group they called the TCBS, were killed in the war. Many readers see the experience behind the dead marshes, the ruined lands and the exhausted soldiers of The Lord of the Rings, and behind its sense that victory comes at a lasting cost.

The professor

After the war Tolkien became an academic. From 1925 to 1945 he was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, at Pembroke College, and then Merton Professor of English Language and Literature until 1959. He spent his career studying and teaching the languages and literature of early England.

In 1936 he gave a lecture, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, arguing that the Old English poem should be read for its monsters and its vision, not just mined for history. The lecture changed how scholars read the poem, and it shows what Tolkien valued in stories.

Languages first

Tolkien invented languages from his youth, and he once explained that his stories were written to give his languages a world to live in. The elvish tongues of Middle-earth came first, and the histories, maps and peoples grew around them.

That is why Middle-earth feels so deep. Its names, songs and legends have the feel of a real history because they were built over decades, long before most of them appeared in print. The same approach to building a world carefully from the inside shaped many later writers, among them Ursula K. Le Guin.

The Inklings

At Oxford Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, the author of the Narnia books, and both belonged to the Inklings, an informal group of writers who met to read their work aloud. Tolkien read early drafts of his stories to the group.

Tolkien was also a significant factor in Lewis's conversion to Christianity. The two men disagreed about much, including Lewis's Narnia books, but their friendship mattered deeply to both of their careers.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

The Hobbit appeared in 1937, a children's book that began as a story told to his own children. Its success led his publisher to ask for a sequel. What arrived, after many years, was The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954 and 1955.

Tolkien thought of it as one novel, not a trilogy, as we explain in why The Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy. Its later success, and the films made from it, are covered in how The Lord of the Rings was filmed.

Beren and Lúthien

Tolkien died on 2 September 1973, aged 81, in Bournemouth. He was buried in Oxford in the same grave as Edith, who had died before him. Under their names on the gravestone are the names of the lovers from his mythology: Lúthien for her, and Beren added for him.

After his death, his son Christopher edited and published much of the mythology his father had worked on for decades, including The Silmarillion. Middle-earth turned out to be far larger than the two books published in Tolkien's lifetime.