Tolkien Biography

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3 ,1892 is Bloemfontein, South Africa. Tolkiens’ memories of South Africa were vivid and slightly influenced his writing because on Febuary 15, 1896 his father died, forcing him and his family to move to England. Tolkien was split between living in very rural Sarehole and going to school in the urban city of Birmingham (Decoster 1). This became extremely important in developing Tolkiens linguistic skills. The differences in the “city” language and “country” language struck up much interest in linguistics for Tolkien. Tolkiens’ mother noticed her sons interest in language and began to teach him Latin and Greek. Tolkien also became interest

Even though Tolkien passed away some time ago, his writing still has an impact of today’s society. Today, the Lord of the Rings series are still very popular books. On December 19, 2001 The Fellowship of the Ring opened in theatres. In the first day, the movie earned $18.2 million. Within the first week the movie had raked in $95.3 million. By looking at these numbers, you can see that the movie was extremely popular even though it was produced and released eighteen years after Tolkiens’ death. In December 2002 The Two Towers opened in theatres and had equal success to the Fellowship of the Ring. Still, in December of 2003 yet another movie is due out. (Friesen 1)

In 1900 Mabel Tolkien, Tolkiens mother, was received into the Catholic church. Her father was shocked, he was a Methodist, the rest of the family were Baptists and some were directly against Catholicism. They ended up being excluded from the family because of this. From then on, Tolkien was brought up in the faith of Plo Nono and remained to be devout Catholic. (Rogers 2)

In 1911, Tolkien left for Exeter College, Oxford. He then studied Classics, Old English, Germanic languages, Welsh and Finish until 1913 (Friesen 1). He obtained a degree in Honour Moderations, the half point stage of a 4 year Oxford “Greats” course. He also obtained a “alpha plus” in Philology. In 1914, war broke out but unlike most of his classmates, Tolkien did not rush out to join the army. (Hammond 2) He returned to Oxford instead where he worked hard to achieve a complete degree in June 1915. He was also working on many different types of poems and creating his own languages. His main focus at this time was the language created by his own mind called “Qenya,” which was influenced by Finnish. Tolkien eventually enlisted in the army as a second lieutenant. For many months, Tolkien was kept in England. Eventually he was sent to France. (Carpenter 88)

Tolkien was sent to active duty on the Western Front. After months of being in and out of the trenches, he finally came down with “trench fever,” an infection which is very common in unsanitary conditions (Friesen 3). In early November, he was sent back to England where he spent the next month in a hospital in Birmingham. Some of Tolkiens’ friends from his earlier years, had been killed in action. He started writing stories in memory of his friends and his war experiences. (Hammond 2) These stories eventually developed into the Book of Lost Tales. Through the next two years, his illness kept reoccurring. His periods of remission enabled him to do home service and be activated as lieutenant. While he was stationed at Hull, he and Edith would walk in the woods and she would dance for him. This was the inspiration for quite a few of his

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