J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien FRSL | |
---|---|
Born | John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 3 January 1892 Bloemfontein, Orange Free State |
Died | 2 September 1973 Bournemouth, Hampshire, England | (aged 81)
Occupation |
|
Nationality | British |
Education | King Edward's School, Birmingham Exeter College, Oxford |
Genre |
|
Spouse | |
Children | |
Relatives | Tolkien family |
Signature | |
Military career | |
Allegiance | United Kingdom |
Branch | British Army |
Years | 1915–1920 |
Rank | Lieutenant |
Unit | Lancashire Fusiliers |
Battles |
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien .
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the
After Tolkien's death, his son
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. As a result, he has been popularly identified as the "father" of modern fantasy literature—or, more precisely, of high fantasy, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of all time.
Biography
Ancestry
Tolkien was English, and thought of himself as such.[3][T 1] His immediate paternal ancestors were middle-class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in London and
According to Ryszard Derdziński, the surname Tolkien is of Low Prussian origin and probably means "son/descendant of Tolk".[5][4] Tolkien mistakenly believed his surname derived from the German word tollkühn, meaning "foolhardy",[7] and jokingly inserted himself as a "cameo" into The Notion Club Papers under the literally translated name Rashbold.[8] However, Derdziński has demonstrated this to be a false etymology. While J. R. R. Tolkien was aware of his family's German origin, his knowledge of the family's history was limited because he was "early isolated from the family of his prematurely deceased father".[5][4]
Childhood
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in
As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a large baboon spider in the garden, an event some believe to have been later echoed in his stories, although he admitted no actual memory of the event as an adult. In an earlier incident from Tolkien's infancy, a young family servant took the baby to his homestead, returning him the next morning.[10]
When he was three, he went to England with his mother and brother on what was intended to be a lengthy family visit. His father, however, died in South Africa of rheumatic fever before he could join them.[11] This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took him to live with her parents in Kings Heath,[12] Birmingham. Soon after, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole (now in Hall Green), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham.[13] He enjoyed exploring Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog and the Clent, Lickey and Malvern Hills, which would later inspire scenes in his books, along with nearby towns and villages such as Bromsgrove, Alcester, and Alvechurch and places such as his aunt Jane's farm Bag End, the name of which he used in his fiction.[14]
Mabel Tolkien taught her two children at home. Ronald, as he was known in the family, was a keen pupil.[15] She taught him a great deal of botany and awakened in him the enjoyment of the look and feel of plants. Young Tolkien liked to draw landscapes and trees, but his favourite lessons were those concerning languages, and his mother taught him the rudiments of Latin very early.[16]
Tolkien could read by the age of four and could write fluently soon afterwards. His mother allowed him to read many books. He disliked
Mabel Tolkien was received into the
Before her death, Mabel Tolkien had assigned the guardianship of her sons to her close friend, Father
Youth
While in his early teens, Tolkien had his first encounter with a constructed language, Animalic, an invention of his cousins, Mary and Marjorie Incledon. At that time, he was studying Latin and Anglo-Saxon. Their interest in Animalic soon died away, but Mary and others, including Tolkien himself, invented a new and more complex language called Nevbosh. The next constructed language he came to work with, Naffarin, would be his own creation.[24][25] Tolkien learned Esperanto some time before 1909. Around 10 June 1909 he composed "The Book of the Foxrook", a sixteen-page notebook, where the "earliest example of one of his invented alphabets" appears.[26] Short texts in this notebook are written in Esperanto.[27]
In 1911, while they were at King Edward's School, Tolkien and three friends, Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Bache Smith, and Christopher Wiseman, formed a semi-secret society they called the T.C.B.S. The initials stood for Tea Club and Barrovian Society, alluding to their fondness for drinking tea in
In 1911, Tolkien went on a summer holiday in Switzerland, a trip that he recollected vividly in a 1968 letter,
In October of the same year, Tolkien began studying at
Courtship and marriage
At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, who was three years his senior, when he and his brother Hilary moved into the boarding house where she lived in Duchess Road, Edgbaston. According to Humphrey Carpenter, "Edith and Ronald took to frequenting Birmingham teashops, especially one which had a balcony overlooking the pavement. There they would sit and throw sugarlumps into the hats of passers-by, moving to the next table when the sugar bowl was empty. ... With two people of their personalities and in their position, romance was bound to flourish. Both were orphans in need of affection, and they found that they could give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love."[34]
His guardian, Father Morgan, considered it "altogether unfortunate"[T 4] that his surrogate son was romantically involved with an older, Protestant woman; Tolkien wrote that the combined tensions contributed to his having "muffed [his] exams".[T 4] Morgan prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with Edith until he was 21. Tolkien obeyed this prohibition to the letter,[35] with one notable early exception, over which Father Morgan threatened to cut short his university career if he did not stop.[36]
On the evening of his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith, who was living with family friend C. H. Jessop at Cheltenham. He declared that he had never ceased to love her, and asked her to marry him. Edith replied that she had already accepted the proposal of George Field, the brother of one of her closest school friends. But Edith said she had agreed to marry Field only because she felt "on the shelf" and had begun to doubt that Tolkien still cared for her. She explained that, because of Tolkien's letter, everything had changed.[37]
On 8 January 1913, Tolkien travelled by train to Cheltenham and was met on the platform by Edith. The two took a walk into the countryside, sat under a railway viaduct, and talked. By the end of the day, Edith had agreed to accept Tolkien's proposal. She wrote to Field and returned her engagement ring. Field was "dreadfully upset at first", and the Field family was "insulted and angry".[37] Upon learning of Edith's new plans, Jessop wrote to her guardian, "I have nothing to say against Tolkien, he is a cultured gentleman, but his prospects are poor in the extreme, and when he will be in a position to marry I cannot imagine. Had he adopted a profession it would have been different."[38]
Following their engagement, Edith reluctantly announced that she was converting to Catholicism at Tolkien's insistence. Jessop, "like many others of his age and class ... strongly anti-Catholic", was infuriated, and he ordered Edith to find other lodgings.[39]
Edith Bratt and Ronald Tolkien were formally engaged at Birmingham in January 1913, and married at St Mary Immaculate Catholic Church at Warwick, on 22 March 1916.[40] In his 1941 letter to Michael, Tolkien expressed admiration for his wife's willingness to marry a man with no job, little money, and no prospects except the likelihood of being killed in the Great War.[T 4]
First World War
In August 1914, Britain entered the
France
On 5 June 1916, Tolkien boarded a troop transport for an overnight voyage to Calais. Like other soldiers arriving for the first time, he was sent to the British Expeditionary Force's base depot at Étaples. On 7 June, he was informed that he had been assigned as a signals officer to the 11th (Service) Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers. The battalion was part of the 74th Brigade, 25th Division. While waiting to be summoned to his unit, Tolkien sank into boredom. To pass the time, he composed a poem titled The Lonely Isle, which was inspired by his feelings during the sea crossing to Calais. To evade the British Army's postal censorship, he developed a code of dots by which Edith could track his movements.[46] He left Étaples on 27 June 1916 and joined his battalion at Rubempré, near Amiens.[47] He found himself commanding enlisted men who were drawn mainly from the mining, milling, and weaving towns of Lancashire.[48] According to John Garth, he "felt an affinity for these working class men", but military protocol prohibited friendships with "other ranks". Instead, he was required to "take charge of them, discipline them, train them, and probably censor their letters ... If possible, he was supposed to inspire their love and loyalty."[49] Tolkien later lamented, "The most improper job of any man ... is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity."[49]
Battle of the Somme
Tolkien arrived at the
According to his children
Many of his dearest school friends were killed in the war. Among their number were Rob Gilson of the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, who was killed on the
According to John Garth, Kitchener's Army, in which Tolkien served, at once marked existing social boundaries and counteracted the class system by throwing everyone into a desperate situation together. Tolkien was grateful, writing that it had taught him "a deep sympathy and feeling for the Tommy; especially the plain soldier from the agricultural counties".[54]
Home front
A weak and emaciated Tolkien spent the remainder of the war alternating between hospitals and garrison duties, being deemed medically unfit for general service.
I never called Edith Luthien—but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks
Mandos.[T 5]
On 16 July 1919, Tolkien was taken off active service, at Fovant, on Salisbury Plain, with a temporary disability pension.[61]
Academic and writing career
On 3 November 1920, Tolkien was demobilized and left the army, retaining his rank of lieutenant.[62] His first civilian job after World War I was at the Oxford English Dictionary, where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter W.[63] In 1920, he took up a post as reader in English language at the University of Leeds, becoming the youngest member of the academic staff there.[64] While at Leeds, he produced A Middle English Vocabulary and a definitive edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with E. V. Gordon; both became academic standard works for several decades. He translated Sir Gawain, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. In 1925, he returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, with a fellowship at Pembroke College.[65]
In mid-1919, he began to tutor undergraduates privately, most importantly those of Lady Margaret Hall and St Hugh's College, given that the women's colleges were in great need of good teachers in their early years, and Tolkien as a married professor (then still not common) was considered suitable, as a bachelor don would not have been.[66]
During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote
Beowulf
In the 1920s, Tolkien undertook a translation of Beowulf, which he finished in 1926, but did not publish. It was later edited by his son Christopher and published in 2014.[68]
Ten years after finishing his translation, Tolkien gave a highly acclaimed lecture on the work, "
According to Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien began his series of lectures on Beowulf in a most striking way, entering the room silently, fixing the audience with a look, and suddenly declaiming in Old English the opening lines of the poem, starting "with a great cry of Hwæt!" It was a dramatic impersonation of an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it made the students realize that Beowulf was not just a set text but "a powerful piece of dramatic poetry".[74] Decades later, W. H. Auden wrote to his former professor, thanking him for the "unforgettable experience" of hearing him recite Beowulf, and stating: "The voice was the voice of Gandalf".[74]
Second World War
In the run-up to the
In 1945, Tolkien moved to
Family
The Tolkiens had four children: John Francis Reuel Tolkien (17 November 1917 – 22 January 2003), Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien (22 October 1920 – 27 February 1984), Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (21 November 1924 – 16 January 2020) and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien (18 June 1929 – 28 February 2022).[81][82] Tolkien was very devoted to his children and sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas when they were young.[83]
Retirement
During his life in retirement, from 1959 up to his death in 1973, Tolkien received steadily increasing public attention and literary fame. In 1961, his friend C. S. Lewis even nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[84] The sales of his books were so profitable that he regretted that he had not chosen early retirement.[16] In a 1972 letter, he deplored having become a cult figure, but admitted that "even the nose of a very modest idol ... cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!"[T 7]
Fan attention became so intense that Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory,
In his retirement Tolkien was a consultant and translator for
Final years
Edith died on 29 November 1971, at the age of 82. Ronald returned to Oxford, where
Tolkien was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1972 New Year Honours[87] and received the insignia of the Order at Buckingham Palace on 28 March 1972.[T 10] In the same year Oxford University gave him an honorary Doctorate of Letters.[32][88]
He had the name
Views
Religion
Tolkien's
Race
Tolkien's fantasy writings have often been accused of embodying a racist attitude.
Nature
During most of his own life,
Writing
Influences
Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences, including his
Publications
"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"
In addition to writing fiction, Tolkien was an author of academic literary criticism. His seminal 1936 lecture, later published as an article, revolutionized the treatment of the Anglo-Saxon epic
"On Fairy-Stories"
This essay discusses the fairy-story as a literary form. It was initially written as the 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Tolkien focuses on Andrew Lang's work as a folklorist and collector of fairy tales. He disagreed with Lang's broad inclusion, in his Fairy Book collections, of traveller's tales, beast fables, and other types of stories. Tolkien held a narrower perspective, viewing fairy stories as those that took place in Faerie, an enchanted realm, with or without fairies as characters. He viewed them as the natural development of the interaction of human imagination and human language.[127]
Children's books and other short works
In addition to his mythopoeic compositions, Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children.[128] He wrote annual Christmas letters from Father Christmas for them, building up a series of short stories (later compiled and published as The Father Christmas Letters).[129] Other works included Mr. Bliss and Roverandom (for children), and Leaf by Niggle (part of Tree and Leaf), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham. Roverandom and Smith of Wootton Major, like The Hobbit, borrowed ideas from his legendarium.[130]
The Hobbit
Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called
The Lord of the Rings
The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what became his most famous work: the epic novel
Tolkien at first intended The Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in the style of The Hobbit, but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing.
The Lord of the Rings became immensely popular in the 1960s and has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the 20th century, judged by both sales and reader surveys.
The Silmarillion
Tolkien wrote a brief "Sketch of the Mythology", which included the tales of Beren and Lúthien and of Túrin; and that sketch eventually evolved into the
Tolkien appointed his son Christopher to be his
Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth
In 1980, Christopher Tolkien published a collection of more fragmentary material, under the title
Works compiled by Christopher Tolkien
Date | Title | Description |
---|---|---|
2007 | The Children of Húrin | tells the story of Húrin Thalion.[144]
|
2009 | The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún | retells the legend of Elder Edda.[145]
|
2013 | The Fall of Arthur | a narrative poem that Tolkien composed in the early 1930s, inspired by high medieval Arthurian fiction but set in the Post-Roman Saxon invasion.[146]
|
2014 | Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary | a prose translation of Beowulf that Tolkien made in the 1920s, with commentary from Tolkien's lecture notes.[147][148] |
2015 | The Story of Kullervo | a retelling of a 19th-century Finnish poem that Tolkien wrote in 1915 while studying at Oxford.[149] |
2017 | Beren and Lúthien | one of the oldest and most often revised in Tolkien's legendarium; a version appeared in The Silmarillion.[150] |
2018 | The Fall of Gondolin | tells of a beautiful, mysterious city destroyed by dark forces; Tolkien called it "the first real story" of Middle-earth.[151][152] |
Manuscript locations
Before his death, Tolkien negotiated the sale of the manuscripts, drafts, proofs and other materials related to his then-published works—including The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Farmer Giles of Ham—to the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at
In 2009, a partial draft of Language and Human Nature, which Tolkien had begun co-writing with C. S. Lewis but had never completed, was discovered at the Bodleian Library.[156]
Languages and philology
Linguistic career
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and
Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things of
Language construction
Parallel to Tolkien's professional work as a philologist, and sometimes overshadowing this work, to the effect that his academic output remained rather thin, was his affection for
Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the mythology associated with them, and he consequently took a dim view of
The popularity of Tolkien's books has had a small but lasting effect on the use of language in fantasy literature in particular, and even on mainstream dictionaries, which today commonly accept Tolkien's idiosyncratic spellings dwarves and dwarvish (alongside dwarfs and dwarfish), which had been little used since the mid-19th century and earlier. (In fact, according to Tolkien, had the Old English plural survived, it would have been dwarrows or dwerrows.) He coined the term eucatastrophe, used mainly in connection with his own work.[162]
Artwork
Tolkien learnt to paint and draw as a child and continued to do so all his adult life. From early in his writing career, the development of his stories was accompanied by drawings and paintings, especially of landscapes, and by maps of the lands in which the tales were set. He produced pictures to accompany the stories told to his own children, including those later published in Mr Bliss and Roverandom, and sent them elaborately illustrated letters purporting to come from Father Christmas. Although he regarded himself as an amateur, the publisher used the author's own cover art,
Legacy
Influence
While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings led directly to
Adaptations
In a 1951 letter to publisher Milton Waldman (1895–1976), Tolkien wrote about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "[t]he cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama".
In 1977, an animated
Possible sainthood
On 2 September 2017, the Oxford Oratory, Tolkien's parish church during his time in Oxford, offered its first Mass for the intention of Tolkien's cause for beatification to be opened.[186][187] A prayer was written for his cause.[186]
Memorials
Tolkien and the characters and places from his works have become eponyms of many real-world objects. These include geographical features on Titan (Saturn's largest moon),[188] street names such as There and Back Again Lane, inspired by The Hobbit,[189] mountains such as Mount Shadowfax, Mount Gandalf and Mount Aragorn in Canada,[190][191] companies such as Palantir Technologies,[192] and species including the wasp Shireplitis tolkieni,[193] 37 new species of Elachista moths,[193][194] and many fossils.[195][196][197]
Since 2003,
Several blue plaques in England commemorate places associated with Tolkien, including for his childhood, his workplaces, and places he visited.[44][204][205]
Address | Commemoration | Date unveiled | Issued by |
---|---|---|---|
Sarehole Mill, Hall Green, Birmingham | "Inspired" 1896–1900 (i.e. lived nearby) | 15 August 2002 | Birmingham Civic Society and The Tolkien Society[206] |
1 Duchess Place, Ladywood, Birmingham | Lived near here 1902–1910 | Unknown | Birmingham Civic Society[207] |
4 Highfield Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham | Lived here 1910–1911 | Unknown | Birmingham Civic Society and The Tolkien Society[208] |
Plough and Harrow, Hagley Road , Birmingham
|
Stayed here June 1916 | June 1997 | The Tolkien Society[209] |
2 Darnley Road, West Park, Leeds | First academic appointment, Leeds | 1 October 2012 | The Tolkien Society and Leeds Civic Trust[210] |
20 Northmoor Road, North Oxford | Lived here 1930–1947 | 3 December 2002 | Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board[211] |
Hotel Miramar, East Overcliff Drive, Bournemouth | Stayed here regularly from the 1950s until 1972 | 10 June 1992 by Priscilla Tolkien
|
Borough of Bournemouth[212] |
St Mary Immaculate, 45 West Street, Warwick | Married here 22 March 1916 | 6 July 2018 | Warwick Town Council[213] |
The Royal Mint produced a commemorative £2 coin in 2023 to mark the 50th anniversary of Tolkien's death.[214]
Notes
References
Primary
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #190 to Rayner Unwin, 3 July 1956: "After all the book is English, and by an Englishman"
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #267 to Michael Tolkien, 9–10 January 1965.
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #306 to Michael Tolkien, 1967 or 1968
- ^ a b c d e f g h Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #43 to Michael Tolkien, 6–8 March 1941
- ^ a b Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #340 to Christopher Tolkien, 11 July 1972.
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #35 to C. A. Furth, Allen & Unwin, 2 February 1939 (see also editorial note).
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #336 to Sir Patrick Browne, 23 May 1972
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #332 to Michael Tolkien, 24 January 1972
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #294 to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, 8 February 1967
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #334 to Rayner Unwin, 30 March 1972 (editorial note).
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #250 to Michael Tolkien, 1 November 1963
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #7, to the Electors of the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford, 27 June 1925
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #163 to W. H. Auden, 7 June 1955.
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #144 to Naomi Mitchison, 25 April 1954.
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #180 to 'Mr Thompson' (draft), 14 January 1956.
- ^ Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #131 to Milton Walden, late 1951
Secondary
- ISBN 0-04-440162-0.
- ISBN 978-1-4058-8118-0.
- ^ Brennan, David (21 September 2018). "The Hobbit: How Tolkien Sunk a German Anti-Semitic Inquiry Into His Race". Newsweek. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject – which should be sufficient.
- ^ a b c d Derdziński, Ryszard (2017). "On J. R. R. Tolkien's Roots" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 January 2019.
- ^ a b c Derdziński, Ryszard. "Z Prus do Anglii. Saga rodziny J. R. R. Tolkiena (XIV–XIX wiek)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 January 2019.
- ^ "Absolute Verteilung des Namens 'Tolkien'". verwandt.de (in German). MyHeritage UK. Archived from the original on 10 May 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
- ^ "Ash nazg gimbatul". Der Spiegel (in German). No. 35/1969. 25 August 1969. Archived from the original on 27 April 2011.
Professor Tolkien, der seinen Namen vom deutschen Wort 'tollkühn' ableitet,... .
- ISBN 978-3-499-50664-2.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 14
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 13 Both the spider incident and the visit to the homestead are covered here.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 24
- ^ Carpenter 1977, Ch I, "Bloemfontein". At 9 Ashfield Road, King's Heath.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 27
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 113
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 29
- ^ a b Doughan, David (2002). "JRR Tolkien Biography". Life of Tolkien. Archived from the original on 3 March 2006.
- ISBN 0-203-32566-4.
By the 1840s, of course, adults were already reading tales of adventure involving Red Indians
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 22
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 30
- ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 24–51
- ^ a b Carpenter 1977, p. 31
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 39
- ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 25–38
- ^ "Tolkien's Not-So-Secret Vice". Archived from the original on 22 November 2012.
- ^ "Tolkien's Languages". Archived from the original on 24 December 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-86554-894-7. Archived from the original on 15 February 2017. See also: Book of the Foxrook Archived 2 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine
- The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Routledge. p. 172, and Book of the Foxrook Archived 2 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine; transcription on Tolkien i Esperanto Archived 19 October 2016 at the Wayback Machine; the text begins with "PRIVATA KODO SKAŬTA" (Private Scout Code)
- ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 53–54
- ^ Tolkien and the Great War, p. 6.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 82
- ^ "1911 – J. R. R. Tolkien besichtigt das Oberwallis". Valais Wallis Digital (in German). Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. citing Carpenter & Tolkien 1981, Letters #306 to Michael Tolkien, autumn 1968.
- ^ a b Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (26 February 2004). The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien Author and Illustrator. Royal Mail Group plc (commemorative postage stamp pack).
- ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 45, 63–64
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 40
- ^ Doughan, David (2002). "War, Lost Tales and Academia". J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biographical Sketch. Archived from the original on 3 March 2006.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 43
- ^ a b Carpenter 1977, pp. 67–69
- ^ Tolkien & Tolkien 1992, p. 34
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 73
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 86
- ^ a b Carpenter 1977, pp. 77–85
- ^ "No. 29232". The London Gazette. 16 July 1915. p. 6968.
- ^ Tolkien and the Great War, p. 94.
- ^ a b "Memorials". The Tolkien Society. 29 October 2016. Archived from the original on 8 March 2021. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
- ^ Garth 2003, p. 138
- ^ Garth 2003, pp. 144–145
- ^ Garth 2003, pp. 147–148
- ^ Garth 2003, pp. 148–149
- ^ a b Garth 2003, p. 149
- ^ Quoted in Garth 2003, p. 200
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 93
- ^ Tolkien & Tolkien 1992, p. 40
- ^ Carpenter 1977, pp. 93, 103, 105
- ^ Garth 2003, pp. 94–95
- ^ Garth 2003, pp. 207 et seq.
- ^ Tolkien's Webley .455 service revolver was put on display in 2006 as part of a Battle of the Somme exhibition in the Imperial War Museum, London. (See "Second Lieutenant J R R Tolkien". Battle of the Somme. Imperial War Museum. Archived from the original on 25 November 2018. and "Webley.455 Mark 6 (VI Military)". Imperial War Museum Collection Search. Imperial War Museum. Archived from the original on 25 November 2018.)
- ^ Several of his service records, mostly dealing with his health problems, can be seen at the National Archives. ("Officer's service record: J R R Tolkien". First World War. National Archives. Archived from the original on 8 March 2009. Retrieved 2 December 2007.)
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 98
- ^ "No. 30588". The London Gazette (Supplement). 19 March 1918. p. 3561.
- wild carrot (Daucus carota). See John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War (Harper Collins/Houghton Mifflin 2003, chapter 12), and Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, & Edmund Weiner, The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary(OUP 2006).
- ^ Grotta 2002, p. 58
- ^ "No. 32110". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 November 1920. p. 10711.
- ^ Gilliver, Peter; Marshall, Jeremy; Weiner, Edmund (2006). The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
- ISBN 978-0-7624-0956-3. Archivedfrom the original on 11 May 2011.
- ^ "Memorial to JRR Tolkien commissioned". Pembroke College Oxford. University of Oxford. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-230-11840-9. Archivedfrom the original on 17 October 2018.
- ^ See The Name Nodens (1932) in the bibliographical listing. For the etymology, see Nodens#Etymology.
- ^ Acocella, Joan (2 June 2014). "Slaying Monsters: Tolkien's 'Beowulf'". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 30 May 2014.
- ^ Carpenter 1977, p. 143
- ^ Ramey, Bill (30 March 1998). "The Unity of Beowulf: Tolkien and the Critics". Wisdom's Children. Archived from the original on 21 April 2006.
- ^ Tolkien: Finn and Hengest. Chiefly, p.4 in the Introduction by Alan Bliss.
- ^ Tolkien: Finn and Hengest, the discussion of Eotena, passim.
- ^ Kennedy, Michael (2001). "Tolkien and Beowulf – Warriors of Middle-earth". Amon Hen. Archived from the original on 9 May 2006.
- ^ a b Carpenter 1977, p. 133
- ISBN 978-1-7895-0621-1.
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Sources
- ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.
- ———; Tolkien, Christopher, eds. (1981). ISBN 978-0-04-826005-5.
- ISBN 978-0-00-711953-0.
- Grotta, Daniel (2002). J. R. R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth: A Biography. ISBN 978-0-7624-1337-9.
- ISBN 978-1-119-65602-9.
- ISBN 978-0-618-25760-7.
Further reading
A small selection of books about Tolkien and his works:
- ISBN 978-0-937058-87-9.
- ISBN 978-0-395-27628-0.
- ISBN 978-0-415-28944-3.
- ———, ed. (2004). Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, a Reader. Louisville: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-2301-1.
- Cilli, Oronzo; OCLC 1099568978.
- ———; Smith, Arden R.; Wynne, Patrick H.; OCLC 1020852373.
- Costabile, Giovanni Carmine (2018). "Bilbo Baggins and the Forty Thieves The Reworking of Folktale Motifs in The Hobbit (and The Lord of the Rings)". OCLC 8513422873.
- ISBN 0-313-32592-8.
- ISBN 978-0-618-47885-9.
- ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.
- ISBN 978-1-58768-026-7.
- ———; Porter, David (2001). The Inklings Handbook: The Lives, Thought and Writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Their Friends. London: Azure. ISBN 978-1-902694-13-9.
- ISBN 978-0-87338-744-6.
- ———; ISBN 978-0-313-30530-6. DDC 823.912 LC PR6039.
- ISBN 978-0-618-12699-6.
- ISBN 978-0-345-44976-4.
- Fredrick, Candice; McBride, Sam (2001). Woman among the Inklings: Gender, C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-31245-8.
- ISBN 978-0-19-861069-4.
- Glyer, Diana Pavlac (2007). The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-0-87338-890-0.
- Grant, Patrick (1979). "Belief in Fantasy: J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings". Six Modern Authors and Problems of Belief. MacMillan. ISBN 978-0-333-26340-2.
- Haber, Karen (2001). Meditations on Middle-earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-27536-5.
- Harrington, Patrick, ed. (2003). Tolkien and Politics. London, England: Third Way Publications. ISBN 978-0-9544788-2-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4039-4671-3.
- ISBN 978-0-00-274018-0.
- Perry, Michael (2006). Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings. Seattle: Inkling Books. ISBN 978-1-58742-019-1.
- Ready, William (1968). Understanding Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings. New York: Paperback Library.
- Rorabeck, Robert (2008). Tolkien's Heroic Quest. Crescent Moon. ISBN 978-1-86171-239-4.
- ISBN 978-0-00-821454-8.
- ISBN 978-0-618-12764-1.
- Strachey, Barbara (1981). ISBN 978-0-04-912016-7.
- ISBN 978-0-261-10239-2.
- ISBN 978-0-517-14648-4.
- White, Michael (2003). Tolkien: A Biography. New American Library. ISBN 978-0-451-21242-9.
- Zaleski, Philip; Zaleski, Carol (2016). The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-53625-1.
External links
- HarperCollins Tolkien Website
- Additional Resources for J. R. R. Tolkien compiled by the Marion E. Wade Center
- "Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31766. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- J. R. R. Tolkien at IMDb
- J. R. R. Tolkien at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Archival material at Leeds University Library
- Audio recording of Tolkien from 1929 on a language learning gramophone disc
- BBC film (1968) featuring Tolkien
- Biography at the Tolkien Society
- J. R. R. Tolkien at The Encyclopedia of Fantasy
- J. R. R. Tolkien at the Internet Book List
- J. R. R. Tolkien at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
- Journal of Inklings Studies—Peer-reviewed journal on Tolkien's literary circle, based at Oxford
- The Tolkien Estate Website
- Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
- Works by J. R. R. Tolkien at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Works by J. R. R. Tolkien at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about J. R. R. Tolkien at Internet Archive