John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in 1892 in Blomfontein, South Africa, where his father was a branch bank manager.
At
the age of three, Ronald's health caused him, his mother, and his brother Hilary to return to England, where they settled in
Sarehole, a small county village on the outskirts of Birmingham.
His father died soon after, and then his mother when he was twelve.
Tolien's
early education was at King Edward's School in Birmingham, where he showed some considerable potential in languages and Old English literature.
He fell in love with Edith Bratt, also an orphan, during his last years at St. Edward's.
In 1911 he entered Exeter College, Oxford, with a scholarship and received a First Class Honours degree in English in 1915. Immediately after
graduation he entered the army.
In 1916 he married Edith and was shipped to France to fight in World War I to serve with the infantry. After four months in the front lines he fell victim to trench fever and was sent home.
He joined the staff of the Oxford English Dictionary (writing entries in the W's) at the conclusion to WWI.
He taught at Leeds University for a period, and was eventually elected to a chair in Anglo-Saxon at Oxford where he remained for the remainder of his academic life, winning some fame as a teacher and scholar of philology.
While at Oxford, Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon for twenty-years, and was later elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.
Tolkien did move house to a suburban part of Oxford. He then tried a seaside resort, but returned to Oxford upon the death of his wife.
Tolkien died a peaceful death at the age of eighty-one.
Apart from this academic career, Tolkien wrote a number of books, including The Hobbit and "The Lord of the Rings, which have become classics of literature and which have influenced both readers and literature immensely since their publication.
The creation of Middle-earth occupied Tolkien for sixty-years.
He created languages and socio-cultural contexts for these languages to develop. He based much of his myth-making on Christian, Celtic and Germanic sources to create his own internally consistent and contained cosmology. It was a process which took Tolkien twenty years.
Tolkien also composed stories for his own children. About 1930, one of
these beginning with the idle sentence "In a whole in the ground there lived a hobbit," became more and more involved as
Tolkien defined hobbits and created adventure for one particular hobbit. Gradually it became clear to Tolkien that Bilbo
Baggins' adventures took place in the same Middle-earth as his high heroic tales, but at a much later age. After six years of
intermittent composition, The Hobbit was published as a children's book to critical and popular acclaim.
Immediately Tolkien
began work on The Lord of the Rings, published in 1954-55 after years of painstaking revision. In many ways a reworking
of the plot of The Hobbit, the length, intensity and complex theses of the Rings trilogy make it the adult epic Tolkien desired to
create.
Although its reputation was slow to grow, the paperback publication of the trilogy in the mid-sixties established the
enormous fame of Middle-earth and its creator.
Following
the publication of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent the rest of his life polishing and refining the conception of his heroic cycle, leaving the original stories relatively untouched but embellishing their
context with philosophical essays, genealogical tables, historical speculations, and especially in his last years, philosophical and
theological explications, all designed to clarify the meaning of his creation and enhance its internal consistency. The Silmarillion
and Unfinished Tales, both edited by his son Christopher and published posthumously, bear witness to the three crucial
elements of Tolkien's authorship: the ambitiousness and learned complexity of his creation, his ceaseless reworking of details in
search of perfection, and his loving devotion to these labors.
There can be no question that the enormous popular success of Middle-earth is due to the labors and spirit of its creator. The
creation of an accomplished storyteller, linguist, poet and painter, Middle-earth's depths and plausibility are unmatched in
modern fantasy and it's reworking of the common ground of Norse, Celtic and Judeo-Christian tradition lies in Tolkien's belief
in the importance and perfectibility of Man.
Although its most striking creatures are noble Elves, evil goblins, proud Dwarves, cunning dragons, wizards, Eagles and
demons, the most important race in Middle-earth is Men, for whose creation and salvation Middle-earth is prepared. The Men
of Middle-earth, free to choose their own destinies, run the full gamut from demonic evil and goblin-like depravity to a purity
and integrity equaling that of the noblest Elves.
The contrast between goblins and Elves provides one of the most important
measures of good and evil in Middle-earth. The Silmarillion, tells that Elves, the Elder Children of God, were created to guide
Men, the Younger Children, on the long journey to spiritual wisdom and love of God. Goblins, in contrast, are corrupted Elves,
bred in mockery of Morgoth, the Necromancer's master, whose revolt against God brings evil to Middle-earth. Thus Bard's
ability to learn restraint from the Elvenking is an important sign of his virtue, and Bilbo's love of Elves indicated his spiritual
grace.
Where the Elves serve as a model for Men's aspirations, hobbits provide a touchstone. Their lives display a basic goodness, a
conservative, pastoral simplicity. Close to Nature and free from personal ambition and greed, hobbits need no government and
are generally anti-technological. Rarely corrupted, they never corrupt others. The hobbits' Shire is a quiet backwater, removed
both from the agonies and the high destiny of Men, whether in Middle-earth or the 20th century. The Shire is, for Tolkien, a
mirror in which we can search for the simple peace at the center of our hearts.
This profile was based on a profile which can be found at
Robert Foster's Teacher's Guide page.
