Parents did not agree on how to name the first child. The mother, resigned to the need to give the boy the middle name Ruel (as in the Tolkien family from time immemorial all eldest sons were recorded), chose “Ronald” as the first name. Father liked "John" better. So they called the boy - each in his own way. Later, classmates nicknamed him the Zvonar, for his love of lengthy reasoning. Colleagues called him J.R.R.T, students called him the Mad Hatter, close friends called him an Oxymoron. This word in philology denotes paradoxical phrases, such as “foolishly smart” - and this is how the German “Toll-kuhn”, consonant with the name of John Ruel Ronald, can be translated. “It all worked out for me somehow stupidly, not like the others,” Tolkien argued. “The English are like hobbits, after all. The less something happens to them, the more honorable they are. And Oxford is certainly not a hotbed of people with fascinating biographies. My own life story would be more suitable not for an armchair scientist, but for some literary hero ”...
The beginning of his biography seems to be taken from Kipling. Ronald was born in the Orange Republic - much later this state will be called South Africa. His father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, ran a branch of Lloyd Bank in the town of Bloemfontein: only two hundred dilapidated houses, blown through by dust storms from the veld (the bare African steppe, where nothing grows but withered grass). At night, the howl of a jackal freezes the heart, rifle shots interfere with sleep - Bloommfontein men take turns keeping a night watch, driving the lions away from the city. But you can’t scare monkeys with any shots - they jump over fences, climb into houses, drag everything that lies badly. The Tolkiens' barn is full of poisonous snakes. In the first year of life, John Reuel Ronald scares his parents by disappearing from home - it turns out that a local servant boy simply took the baby to the veld, to his village, to show his relatives. In the second year of his life, Tolkien was bitten by a tarantula - fortunately, the nanny quickly discovered the wound and sucked out the poison.
Then life took a sharp turn in the direction of the Dickensian plot. When the boy was four years old, his father died of a tropical fever. Nothing else kept the family in the orange republic, and the mother, Mabel, along with her sons Ronald and Hilary settled in England - they lived almost starving, having only 30 shillings a week. At the age of ten, Ronald was completely orphaned - Mabel brought diabetes to the grave, which they did not know how to treat at the beginning of the 20th century. The little Tolkiens were assigned to live with a malicious distant relative, Aunt Beatrice, in Birmingham. First of all, in front of the orphans, she burned the letters and portraits of their deceased mother. The fact is that Mabel, shortly before her death, converted to Catholicism, and instructed the children in the same spirit. Now Aunt Beatrice sought, by banishing from their memory the memories of their mother, to return the boys to the bosom of the Anglican Church. In fairness, it must be said that this was done with the best of intentions: it is known, after all, that a Catholic in Protestant England will not see an easy life ... But only the little Tolkiens persisted. Hilary paid dearly for his stubbornness: he was not taken to any Birmingham school. But Ronald was lucky - in the most prestigious school of King Edward, where they accepted either rich or very gifted children, they looked at these things through their fingers. And Ronald was so gifted that he was given a scholarship.
It was not a school, but a treasure trove for a boy like the young Tolkien. In addition to the obligatory French and German languages, he studied there Greek and Middle English of the 7th-11th centuries. There were four such lovers of linguistics at the school, and they founded their own club - CHBKO, "Tea Club of the Barrovian Society." After all, they were going to five-o-clock in a small cafe at Barrow's department store on Corporation Street, in the center of Birmingham. Aunt Beatrice tried to forbid Ronald and this innocent entertainment. She believed that a boy without a livelihood should not imagine too much about himself, because in the future he can only count on the place of a street vendor of disinfectants (this, by the way, was Tolkien's grandfather). Fortunately, in addition to the old fury, the boys also had a guardian - the confessor of the late Mabel, fatherFrancis. Once, taking pity, he took the little Tolkiens from Aunt Beatrice and placed them in Mrs. Faulkner's boarding house, all in the same Birmingham. It was in 1908, Ronald was sixteen years old. And then there was a plot of a new "literary" plot - this time a love one.
Edith Bratt occupied a room directly below the one where the Tolkien brothers settled, so that they could talk while sitting on the windowsills. Very pretty, grey-eyed, with a fashionable short haircut. She was almost 3 years older than Ronald, and seemed seductively mature to him. Young people went on bike rides outside the city, sat by the stream for hours, and when it rained, they hid in cafes.
The cafe owner reported these meetings to Mrs. Faulkner: “Just think, my dear! A young man with a girl, secretly, without the accompaniment of elders ... This is a scandal! Father Francis, having learned about everything, was angry: “Edith is a Protestant, besides, you should now only be interested in preparing for Oxford! In general, I forbid you to see, as well as correspond with this girl. At least for the next three years.”
Ronald did not dare to disobey. She and Edith said goodbye at the station - the girl's guardian, her own uncle, ordered her to go to him in Cheltenham. “In three years we will definitely see each other!” Tolkien repeated, like a spell. Edith shook her head hopelessly.
Three years is a long time. Once at Oxford Exeter College, Tolkien seemed to have completely forgotten about the past. He enthusiastically studied languages: Latin, Old English, Welsh, Old Finnish, Old Norse - as well as the art of drinking beer without getting drunk, talking without letting go of his pipe from his mouth, and in the morning looking like a pickle after a night of feasting. However, in January 1913, when the ban expired, the young man wrote a letter to Edith asking for her hand in marriage. The answer stunned Tolkien: it turns out that Edith did not hope for a new meeting with him and had long ago become engaged to a certain George Field, the brother of her school friend.
“Coming to you in Cheltenham,” Ronald sent a telegram. Edith met him on the platform ... Poor George Field was left with a nose: Miss Bratt agreed to marry Tolkien. “You only need one thing for this,” Ronald urged. - Convert to Catholicism!
At first, Edith thought it was a trifling condition. Yes, but her uncle, who was considered one of the pillars of the Anglican community of Cheltenham, immediately kicked her out of the house. Good thing, her cousin, hunchbacked and elderly Jenny Grove, let Edith live with her in Warwick. Ronald rarely came, but he sent letters from Oxford about merry parties, punting and playing tennis, as well as about the most entertaining debates at meetings of the debating club. And also about financial difficulties. There was no talk of a wedding date - it was assumed that Ronald would first get a little rich.
To this end, he was hired as a tutor to two Mexican boys in France. When he returned, Tolkien did not talk about the wedding. He spent everything he earned on old Japanese prints, and looked at them for hours in silence, and was depressed. It turned out that the boys' aunt, a young and lovely signora, was hit to death by a car in Paris.Fortunately, Edith was wise enough not to annoy Ronald too much with her claims. And, grieving for the dead Mexican, he again remembered the bride.
This time the wedding was interrupted by the war. Tolkien was drafted into the army as a lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. In anticipation of being sent to the front line, he grew a mustache, studied connected business (Morse code and the language of signal flags), and scribbled letters to Edith about how he missed ... the university library and a glass of good port wine in friendly company.
In March 1916, they nevertheless got married - very casually and as if by chance - as if there were no six years of waiting. It's just that Tolkien was given a day's leave, and a friend had a free motorcycle on which he could get to Warwick ... Two days later, their regiment went to fight in France. The Times just published statistics: the life of a recruit at the front, on average, does not exceed a few weeks ...
The Battle of the Somme - the first and last in which Tolkien had a chance to participate - went down in history as the most incompetent and bloodiest in the history of England. Nineteen thousand Englishmen died under German machine guns, sixty were wounded. For two days Ronald commanded his company without change. Then - a short respite, and again into battle. Two former members of the BWTO died in this massacre. Tolkien was lucky - he caught trench fever. For many years he then blessed the louse that had bitten him so successfully, infecting him with a saving infection. Ronald was sent to Birmingham for treatment, and his wife immediately arrived there.
This was their honeymoon: Ronald had just left the hospital - pale, emaciated, all kind of transparent, staggering from weakness. It was cold, there was not enough food and fuel. And yet it was the happiest time in the life of the Tolkiens. Once in the forest, on a walk, Edith got naughty and began to dance, singing to herself. After Tolkien claimed: looking at this dance, he came up with his Beren and Luthien - the main characters of the "Legendarium" and secondary "Lord of the Rings" (the Strider will sing about them).
In February 1917, the military authorities remembered Tolkien. I had to go to Yorkshire for retraining. But Ronald never reached the front line - the disease relapsed, and he again ended up in the hospital. This went on for another year and a half: a short remission, and a new attack of the disease. A camp at Ruse, a hospital in Yorkshire, a sanatorium in Birmingham. A camp at Birmingham, a hospital at Ruse, a sanatorium in Yorkshire. Edith, tired of following her husband from city to city, returned to Cheltenham to give birth to her first child, John Francis Reyel. It was not clear where and what to live. Ronald is of little use. In letters, Edith broke down, reproached her husband: “Recently, you have spent so much time in bed that you rested for the rest of your life. And here I am…”, etc., etc. But everything eventually ends. The war ended, and with it Ronald's illness (the doctors said: "A miracle!"). It was time to return to Oxford - to establish both scientific and family life ...
... 1929. The Tolkiens already have four children: John, Michael, Christopher and newborn Priscilla. The family lives in a cozy, briar-covered house on Normouth Rose. To work - to teach English philology at Exeter College - Ronald rides a bicycle. On the way, he always mutters something in an unknown language.
Composing new languages was his passion! For example, the Quenya language spoken by the elves in The Lord of the Rings was created by Ronald by mixing Old English and Welsh based on Finnish. But even when Professor Tolkien spoke in normal, English, it was sometimes difficult to understand him. His speech, somewhat indistinct from childhood, became completely illegible after his illness: he whispered, whistled, and, most importantly, always did not keep up with his own thoughts, talked about elves and dwarves, got excited, laughed ... In a word, John Reyel Ronald the longer he lived, the more he became an eccentric.
Costume parties were sometimes held in Oxford - Professor Tolkien invariably appeared in the attire of an ancient Viking with an ax in his hands. He was very fond of the old Celtic epics. And he lamented that England did not have its own mythology, only Scandinavian borrowings. Secretly, he dreamed of creating British mythology himself, and he talked a lot about this at a meeting of the Coalbiters club - on winter evenings, pundits, discussing philological problems, huddled up to the fireplace so much that it seemed that they were about to bury their faces in hot coal. At the same time, they laughed wildly, so that those around them thought: they are carrying obscene things.
For some time now, Tolkien's life has ceased to follow the laws of literature, and has become like the one that thousands of respectable Englishmen lead: in the morning, work, dine at home, with his wife and children, then to the club, then - work again ... That's what Tolkien hated - it was, returning from the "Charberbiters" to get back to the tedious work like checking exam papers. But one day, in the late spring evening of 1936, while checking examination essays, a fateful incident happened to Professor Tolkien. He himself said: “One of the applicants became generous and handed over a whole blank page without writing anything on it - this is the best thing that can happen to an examiner! And I wrote on it "In a hole, deep in the earth lived a hobbit." Actually, I wanted to write “rabbit” (in English - “rabbit”, author's note), but it turned out “hobbit”. Taking into account the Latin “hommo”, that is, “man”, it turns out something like a rabbit-man. Nouns are always overgrown in my mind with stories. And I thought it wouldn't hurt to find out who this hobbit was, and what kind of hole it was. Over time, my accidental slip of the tongue was overgrown with the whole world of Middle-earth”...
In fact, Tolkien had written a little before. His eldest son, John, fell asleep very badly, and had to sit at his head for hours, continuing the “series” about Carrot, a red-haired boy who lives in a wall clock. The middle one, Michael, who suffered from nightmares, demanded stories about an inveterate villain named Bill Stackers (Tolkien remembered this name from the day he saw a sign on the Oxford gate with a strange inscription: “Bill Stackers will be prosecuted”) . The youngest, Christopher, most of all liked to hear about the adventures of the good wizard Tom Bombadil - the one who will save the Hobbits in the Eternal Forest in The Lord of the Rings. Well, now all three began to hear about the Hobbit.
The book publisher Stanley Unwin, who was asked to publish the story “The Hobbit or There and Back Again,” first slipped it to his own ten-year-old son Rayner. For one shilling, the boy wrote a review: “This book, thanks to the cards, does not need any illustrations, it is good and will appeal to all children from 5 to 9 years old.” A year later, Unwin, convinced of the success of The Hobbit, invited Tolkien to write a sequel. So Ronald sat down for The Lord of the Rings.
From 1937 until the outbreak of the Second World War, Tolkien managed to bring the hobbits only to the River (the third chapter of the first book). It took four whole years to get to Balin's tomb (fourth chapter of the second book). The work was difficult. There was not enough paper and ink. Food, by the way, was also lacking. Not to mention peace and confidence in the future. True, Tolkien hardly heard the bombings - Great Britain agreed with Germany to protect large university centers: Oxford with Cambridge and Heidelberg with Göttingen. But you can’t hide from the war at all! Several refugees were placed in the house of the Tolkiens, two younger sons were taken into the army. The eldest - John - escaped this fate only because he was preparing to take the priesthood in Rome. In January 1941, Michael Tolkien was seriously wounded, and his father was not at all up to work. In a word, Tolkien finished the last, sixth book only in 1947 - exactly 10 years after the start of work on The Lord of the Rings. It took another 5 years to negotiate with publishers. Now, after the war, the world had changed, and no one knew if they would buy a sequel to The Hobbit. They decided to release a small circulation - three and a half thousand copies. The selling price was determined almost the minimum - 21 shillings. Still, the publishers were preparing to lose up to £1,000 on this business. Instead, they became millionaires.
“We do any surgery, except for lengthening and sharpening of the ears” - brass plates with this text have appeared on the doors of plastic surgery clinics since the late 50s. It was then that young people of both sexes began to turn to surgeons with a request to change their appearance “under the elves” - and all because of the epic “The Lord of the Rings”, which is called the “book of the twentieth century” ...
“Hello, please invite Professor Tolkien to the phone,” a sonorous voice sang out in an American manner.
— Tolkien is on the phone. What's happened? the professor was frightened awake.
“Nothing happened,” they were surprised at the other end of the wire. “It's just that I'm the head of the Los Angeles Tolkienist Association. We are preparing for the big Lord of the Rings game, we are sewing costumes. Please resolve our dispute. Does the Balrog monster from the first volume have wings?
- Wings? At the Balrog? Tolkien asked dumbfounded. He finally managed to light the lamp and examine the dial of his wristwatch - that's right, three after midnight! Well, of course, in this damn California it's seven in the evening ...
From the bed, an angry Edith spoke up: “What do they allow themselves to do?! Call a respectable family, night-midnight! Tolkien glanced guiltily at his wife. Poor thing! It was always difficult for her with him, and now doubly ... Glory is not an easy burden. Journalists besiege the house, unfamiliar women telegraph about passionate love for Aragorn, a tent camp is set up under the windows, and wild-looking youths, shaggy, with crazy eyes, chant: “Tolkien is a god! Tolkien is a guru!”. They say they swallow the "Lord of the Rings" half and half with LSD ... How, I mean, them? Hippie, right? Or take, at least, such nightly calls. The last time he received a call from Tokyo - they were interested in how the verb “lantar” from the language of elves sounds in the past tense. Such a life fits a movie star, not a quiet Oxford professor.
Tolkien earned much less publishers - only about 5 thousand pounds - but at that time this ensured a comfortable life until the end of his days. And Ronald decided to retire and move away from the fans - to some quiet, old man's place. A pool on the south coast of England turned out to be just that. The only pity is that Tolkien had absolutely no one to talk to here. The spouses suddenly changed places: he was locked up at home, and she, quickly making friends with the locals, walked around the guests and played bridge ... Tolkien was not offended and did not grumble - he was glad that his wife would at least now receive “compensation” for many years of loneliness and downtrodden. It just so happened that only in old age did the couple finally get used to and became attached to each other.
In 1971, eighty-two-year-old Edith died, and without her, Ronald began to fail. At the end of August 1972, at a friend's birthday party, he drank some champagne, and at night he experienced such pain that he had to call an ambulance. Three days later, Tolkien died in the hospital from an ulcer.
She and Edith are buried together in a suburb of Oxford. The inscription on the stone, according to Tolkien's will, reads: "Edith Mary Tolkien, Luthien, 1889-1971, John Reyel Ronald Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1972."
Although, to be honest, the modest Oxford professor looked a little like the heroic Beren. “Actually, I am a hobbit, only a big one,” he said in one of his last interviews. — I love gardens, trees, I smoke a pipe, and I like healthy unsalted and unfrozen food. I love and even dare to wear vests decorated with ornaments in our boring time. I really love mushrooms, I have a simple sense of humor, which many critics find boring and uninteresting. I go to bed late and wake up late whenever possible.”
... The Tolkienist movement is alive to this day. Every now and then, somewhere far away from civilization, they arrange costumed games of hobbits, elves, orcs and trolls, with battles with wooden swords, with sieges of fortresses, funerals and weddings. Numerous Tolkien encyclopedias, reference books and atlases are published every year, in which everything looks like Middle-earth really exists. It can be seen that Clive Staples Lewis (also a famous writer and friend of Tolkien in the Coalbiters club) was right when he wrote an annotation for the first edition of The Lord of the Rings: “we are not afraid to say that the world has not yet seen such a book.”
Irina LYKOVA
Afterword…
In Russia, they learned about Tolkien late. Although the trilogy was published in England just two years after Stalin's death - in 1955 - and soon translated into many languages, including Japanese, Hebrew and Serbo-Croatian - everything but Russian and Chinese.
Tolkien always remained within the framework of reality and did not give his dreams and feelings the status of an indisputable truth. The language he invented was spoken in Atlantis. Atlantis - under a different name - is also found in Tolkien's epic "The Silmarillion". All his life Tolkien was haunted by a dream about a black wave that swallows green fields and villages, and then this dream was inherited by one of his sons...
"The Silmarillion" Tolkien began to write almost immediately after graduating from university (and, we note in parentheses, enlisting in the ranks of the army in the field) - in his own words, invented languages \u200b\u200bdemanded for themselves a universe where they could freely develop and function, and Tolkien set out to create such a universe.
In 1926, Tolkien met C. S. Lewis. Around Tolkien and Lewis soon formed a small circle of writers, students and teachers, passionate about ancient languages and myths - the Inklings. Tolkien does extensive scientific work, translates Anglo-Saxon poetry, works hard to provide for a family that has grown from two to six people, and in his spare time tells fairy tales to children and draws (these drawings in England withstood more than one edition). In 1936, after the publication of one of these "home" fairy tales - "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again" - literary success comes to Tolkien, the publishing house orders a sequel ... Since then, scientific activity has faded into the background and at night Tolkien writes "Lord of the Rings".
The Silmarillion was not forgotten either. By that time, the epic included the history of the creation of the world and the fall of Atlantis, the history of the gods (Valars) and the races that inhabit the Earth together with man - the noble immortal elves (creating his elves, Tolkien largely relied on the Old English Christian tradition, where the discussion about the existence elves and their nature was considered quite justified), dwarves, treemen ... The Silmarillion unfolds into a tragic and majestic picture - and this is not about any other planet, but about our Earth: Tolkien, as it were, "restores" the forgotten links her stories, brings to light lost tales, "clarifies" the origin of children's rhymes, which, in his opinion, are often fragments of beautiful, but lost legends of the past ... Tolkien's plan is ambitious and grandiose - he intends to create nothing more and nothing less than " mythology for England". At the same time, he does not pretend for a second that his fantasy is anything more than a fantasy. Man is made in the image and likeness of God, says Tolkien in his essay "On Fairy Tales"; hence man is capable of creating worlds.
It is worth remembering, however, that the Silmarillion could have remained an unknown eccentricity of an Oxford professor, had not come out from under the pen of the same professor The Lord of the Rings, conceived as a continuation of a children's book, but, word for word, unexpectedly for the author himself turned into a book for all ages. The Lord of the Rings breathed life and soul into the Silmarillion, which it lacked. Against a majestic background, heroes close to everyone appeared, and with their help the reader was able to be transported into Tolkien's world on an equal footing with the heroes of the epic, and Tolkien's world, in addition to the "heroic" and "elven", gained a "human" dimension.
"The Lord of the Rings" is passed by the author through the experience of the Second World War. Tolkien never had any illusions about the "leftists", especially about Stalin - he assessed him quite soberly, and the aura of the winner could not overshadow this truth with its brilliance that blinded many. He foresaw the war - and was very upset by the mistakes of English politicians before it began; Nor was he fascinated by the romance of the Spanish Civil War, although even Lewis had succumbed to it. But, apparently, John Ronald possessed a truly adamantite firmness of conviction and sobriety of thought. The delight of merging with the crowd was absent from the formula of his spirit.
In 1949, The Lord of the Rings was finished ("I gave birth to a monster," Tolkien scared the publishers) and in 1955 was published.
By the age of sixty, when Tolkien suddenly became famous - he was flattered and surprised. In letters to friends, he admitted that, "like all dragons, he is not indifferent to flattery." The success of the book brightened up the last years of the writer with material wealth. A new, voluntary obligation appeared - to answer letters from fans, to receive visitors ... In addition, anxiety joined the joys of success - in many places on the globe the book was taken so seriously that it almost replaced the Holy Scriptures for some enthusiastic personalities, became their life and faith. It is easy to guess how this burdened the conscience of the Christian author.
The first translation of The Hobbit into Russian took place only in 1976. And in 1982 - translation into Russian of the first volume of "The Lord of the Rings" under the title "Keepers".
In the last years of his life, Tolkien was preparing The Silmarillion for publication, but he never finished this work.
Based on the materials of the portal ENROF.net
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien- English writer, linguist and philologist. Best known as the author of the story "The Hobbit, or There and Back Again", the trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" and their background - the novel "The Silmarillion".
Born in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now the Free State, South Africa). His parents, Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857-1896), an English bank manager, and Mabel Tolkien (Sufffield) (1870-1904), arrived in South Africa shortly before their son was born.
In early 1895, after the death of their father, the Tolkien family returned to England. The family settled in Sarehole, near Birmingham. Mabel Tolkien had a very modest income, which was just enough to live on.
Mabel taught her son the basics of the Latin language, and instilled a love of botany. Tolkien liked to paint landscapes and trees from an early age. He read a lot, and from the very beginning he disliked "Treasure Island" and "Gammeln Pied Piper" by the Brothers Grimm, but he liked "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, stories about Indians, fantasy works of George MacDonald and "The Fairy Book" by Andrew Lang .
Tolkien's mother died of diabetes in 1904, at the age of 34. Before her death, she entrusted the upbringing of children to Father Francis Morgan, a priest of the Birmingham Church, a strong and extraordinary personality. It was Francis Morgan who developed Tolkien's interest in philology, for which he was later very grateful.
Before entering school, Tolkien and his brother spent a lot of time outdoors. The experience of these years was enough for Tolkien for all the descriptions of forests and fields in his works. In 1900, Tolkien entered King Edward's School, where he learned Old English and began to study others - Welsh, Old Norse, Finnish, Gothic. He showed early linguistic talent, after studying Old Welsh and Finnish, he began to develop "elvish" languages. Subsequently, he studied at the school of St. Philip (St. Philip's School) and Oxford College Exeter.
In 1908 he met Edith Marie Brett, who had a great influence on his work.
Falling in love prevented Tolkien from going to college right away, besides, Edith was a Protestant and three years older than him. Father Francis took John's word of honor that he would not meet with Edith until he was 21 years old - that is, until the age of majority, when Father Francis ceased to be his guardian. Tolkien fulfilled his promise by not writing a single line to Mary Edith before reaching that age. They didn't even meet or talk.
On the evening of the same day, when Tolkien turned 21, he wrote a letter to Edith, where he declared his love and offered his hand and heart. Edith replied that she had already agreed to marry another person, because she decided that Tolkien had long forgotten her. In the end, she returned the wedding ring to the groom and announced that she was marrying Tolkien. In addition, at his insistence, she converted to Catholicism.
The engagement took place in Birmingham in January 1913, and the wedding took place on March 22, 1916 in the English city of Warwick, in the Catholic Church of St. Mary. Their union with Edith Brett proved to be a long and happy one. The couple lived together for 56 years and raised 3 sons - John Francis Reuel (1917), Michael Hilary Reuel (1920), Christopher Reuel (1924), and daughter Priscilla Mary Reuel (1929).
In 1915, Tolkien graduated with honors from the university and went to serve, soon John was called to the front and participated in the First World War.
John survived the bloody battle on the Somme, where two of his best friends died, after which he began to hate war. Then he fell ill with typhus, and after a long treatment was sent home with a disability. He devoted the following years to a scientific career: first teaching at the University of Leeds, in 1922 he received the position of professor of Anglo-Saxon language and literature at the University of Oxford, where he became one of the youngest professors (at 30 years old) and soon earned a reputation as one of the best philologists in the world.
At the same time, he began to write the great cycle of myths and legends of Middle Earth (Middle Earth), which would later become the "Silmarillion". There were four children in his family, for them he first composed, narrated, and then recorded The Hobbit, which was later published in 1937 by Sir Stanley Unwin.
The Hobbit was a success, and Unwin suggested Tolkien write a sequel, but work on the trilogy took a long time and the book was not finished until 1954, when Tolkien was about to retire. The trilogy was published and was a huge success, which surprised both the author and the publisher. Unwin expected to lose considerable money, but he personally liked the book very much, and he was very eager to publish his friend's work. The book was divided into 3 parts, so that after the publication and sale of the first part, it became clear whether it was worth printing the rest.
After the death of his wife in 1971, Tolkien returned to Oxford. Soon he became seriously ill and soon, on September 2, 1973, he died.
All of his works published after 1973, including The Silmarillion, were published by his son Christopher.
John Tolkien (or Tolkien) is a man whose name has forever become part of the world classics. Throughout his life, the writer wrote only a few well-known literary works, but each of them became a legend in the fantasy world. Tolkien is often called the father of the genre. The fairy-tale worlds created by other authors took Tolkien's stencil as a basis, then, based on the example, they created their own stories.
Tolkien's books
The two most popular Tolkien books are and. To date, the number of released copies of "The Lord of the Ring" is more than 200 million. The writer's works, compared to books by modern fantasy writers, continue to be sold and republished with great success.
The writer's fan club was founded half a century ago, and to this day the number of its members is only growing. Fans of the Professor (as Tolkien is called) gather for themed evenings, hold role-playing games, write apocrypha, fan fiction, communicate fluently in the language of orcs, dwarves, elves, or simply like to read Tolkien's books in a pleasant atmosphere.
The novels of the writer had a tremendous impact on the world culture of the twentieth century. They have been repeatedly filmed, adapted for animation, audio plays, computer games and theatrical plays.
List of Tolkien books online:
Brief biography of John Tolkien
The future writer was born in South Africa in 1892. In 1896, after the death of his father, the family moved to England. In 1904, his mother died, Tolkien, along with his brothers, was sent to boarding school to a close relative of the priest in Birmington. John received a good college education, specializing in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon in classical literature.
With the outbreak of the First World War, he was enrolled as a lieutenant in a regiment of riflemen. While on the battlefield, the author did not stop writing. Due to illness, he was demobilized. In 1916 he married.
Tolkien did not abandon his studies of linguistics, in 1920 he became one of the teachers at the University of Leeds, and some time later - a professor at Oxford University. It was during working days that the idea of the “hobbit” came to him.
A book about short Bilbo Baggins was published in 1937. At first it was attributed to children's literature, although the author himself insisted on the opposite. Tolkien drew all the illustrations for the story himself.
The first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was published in 1954. Books have become a real find for fans of science fiction. The trilogy initially received some negative reviews from critics, but audiences have since embraced Tolkien's world.
The professor left his teaching post in 1959, having written an essay, a collection of poems, and a fairy tale". In 1971, the writer's wife died, two years later Tolkien also died. In marriage, they had four children.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien UK, Birmingham; 01/03/1892 - 09/02/1973
Tolkien's books had a huge impact on world literature. They have been filmed many times in different countries of the world. A huge number of games, cartoons, comics and fanfiction have been created based on Tolkien's books. The writer is rightfully called the father of the modern fantasy genre and he consistently ranks high in the rankings of the most influential and popular writers of the 20th century.
Biography of Tolkien John Ronald Reuel
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in the Republic of South Africa. There, his family ended up thanks to the promotion of his father, who worked as the manager of one of the branches of an English bank. In 1894, the second child was born in the family - Hilary's brother Arthur Ruel. John Tolkien lived in the Republic of South Africa until 1896, when, due to the death of his father, the boys' mother was forced to return to England. The family's income was low, and the mother, in search of consolation, became a deeply religious person. It was she who instilled in children a love for Catholicism, taught the basics of the Latin language, botany, and taught Tolkien to read and write at the age of 4. But when John was only twelve years old, their mother died of diabetes. Since then, the priest of the Birmingham church, Francis Morgan, took up the upbringing of the brothers.
In 1900, John Tolkien entered the school of King Edward, where almost immediately his not hefty abilities for languages were revealed. Thanks to this, by the time he graduated from school, the boy already knew Old English and began to study four more languages. In 1911, John Tolkien visited Switzerland, where, together with his comrades, he overcame 12 km through the mountains. The impressions received during this journey formed the basis of his books. In October of the same year, he entered the University of Oxford, first at the Department of Classical Literature, but soon transferred to the Department of English Language and Literature.
In 1913, John Tolkien announced his engagement to Edith Mary Bret, whom he had known for more than five years, but at the insistence of Francis Morgan, he did not communicate with whom until the age of 21. Despite the fact that by this time Mary had already agreed to marry another person, the engagement took place, and three years later the wedding took place. Together they lived for 56 years, raised three sons and a daughter.
In 1914 the First World War began. In order to complete his education, Tolkien enlisted in the Military Corps. But after receiving a bachelor's degree in 1915, he was admitted to the army as a lieutenant. He served in the army until November 1916 and managed to take part in the battle of the Somme and many other battles. He was commissioned due to the disease of trench fever and for more than two years he was subject to attacks of the disease.
After the end of the war, John Tolkien worked as a professor at Leeds and then at Oxford Universities. It was at this time that he began work on his novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. The book was originally written for her children, but then she received unexpected recognition with the publication in 1937. During the Second World War, John Tolkien was asked to take on the job of a codebreaker if necessary, but the need for his services was not in demand.
After the war, in 1945, Tolkien became a professor at Oxford Merton College, as well as an examiner at the University of Dublin. Here he worked until his retirement. At the same time, he begins work on his most famous book, The Lord of the Rings. Parts of it have been released since 1954. It was widely successful, and against the backdrop of the emerging hippie movement, was perceived as a revelation. Tolkien's books and the writer himself gained wide popularity because of which he even had to change his phone number. After that, several more Tolkien books were published, but many of the writer's sketches remained sketches and were published by his son after the writer's death. The writer died as a result of a stomach ulcer in 1973. Nevertheless, new Tolkien books are coming out to this day. The writer's son, Christoph Tolkien, took up the revision of his father's unfinished creations. Thanks to this, the books "The Silmarillion" and "Children of Hurin" were published. Tolkien's last book was The Fall of Gondolin, which was released in August 2018.
Tolkien's Books at Top Books
John Tolkien's books are still popular to read today, and recently released film adaptations only stir up interest in his work. This allowed them to occupy high places in ours. And given their so-called academic character in this genre, we predict that in the future Tolkien's books will be read with the same enthusiasm.
J. R. R. Tolkien book list
Middle-earth:
- The Fellowship of the Ring
- Two fortresses
- Return of the King
- Silmarillion
- Children of Hurin
- The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Scarlet Book
- The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien - English writer and poet, translator, linguist, philologist, professor at Oxford University - was born January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now the Free State, South Africa).
His parents, Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857-1895), an English bank manager, and Mabel Tolkien (née Suffield) (1870-1904), arrived in South Africa shortly before their son's birth in connection with Arthur's promotion. On February 17, 1894, Arthur and Mabel had a second son, Hilary Arthur Ruel.
In February 1896 after the death of the father of the family, the Tolkien family returns to England. Left alone with two children, Mabel asks for help from relatives. The return home was difficult: Tolkien's mother's relatives did not approve of her marriage. After the death of his father from rheumatic fever, the family settled in Sarehole, near Birmingham. Mabel Tolkien was left alone with two small children in her arms and with a very modest income, which was just enough to live on. In an effort to find a foothold in life, she immersed herself in religion, converted to Catholicism (this led to a final break with her Anglican relatives) and gave her children an appropriate education; as a result, Tolkien remained a deeply religious man throughout his life. Tolkien's strong religious beliefs played a significant role in C.S. Lewis to Christianity, although, to Tolkien's dismay, Lewis preferred the Anglican faith to the Catholic faith.
Mabel also taught her son the basics of the Latin language, and also instilled a love of botany, and Tolkien liked to paint landscapes and trees from an early age. By the age of four, thanks to the efforts of his mother, baby Ronald already knew how to read and even wrote the first letters. He read a lot, and from the very beginning he disliked Stevenson's Treasure Island and the Grimm Brothers' Pied Piper, but he liked Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Indian stories, George MacDonald's fantasy works and Andrew's Book of Fairies Lang. Tolkien's mother died of diabetes in 1904; before her death, she entrusted the upbringing of children to Father Francis Morgan, a priest of the Birmingham church, a strong and extraordinary personality. It was Francis Morgan who developed an interest in philology in little Ronald, for which he was later very grateful to him.
Preschool children spend in nature. These two years were enough for Tolkien for all the descriptions of forests and fields in his works. In 1900 Tolkien entered King Edward's School, where he learned Old English and began to study others - Welsh, Old Norse, Finnish, Gothic. He showed early linguistic talent, after studying Old Welsh and Finnish, he began to develop "elvish" languages. Subsequently, he studied at the school of St. Philip (St. Philip's School) and Oxford College Exeter.
In 1911 while studying at the school of King Edward (Birmingham) Tolkien with three friends - Rob Gilson (Rob Gilson), Geoffrey Smith (Geoffrey Smith) and Christopher Wiseman (Christopher Wiseman) - organized a semi-secret circle called the CHKBO - “Tea Club and Barrovian society” (T.C.B.S., Tea Club and Barrovian Society). This name is due to the fact that friends loved tea, which was sold near the school in the supermarket Barrow (Barrow), as well as in the school library, although this was forbidden. Even after leaving school, members of the Cheka kept in touch, for example, they met in December 1914 at Wiseman's house in London.
Summer 1911 Tolkien traveled to Switzerland, which he later mentions in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo Baggins' journey through the Misty Mountains is based on the journey Tolkien and his twelve companions made from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen. In October of the same year, he began his studies at the University of Oxford (Exeter College).
In 1908, he met Edith Mary Brett, who had a great influence on his work.
Falling in love prevented Tolkien from going to college right away, besides, Edith was a Protestant and three years older than him. Father Francis took Ronald's word of honor that he would not meet with Edith until he was 21 years old - that is, until the age of majority, when Father Francis ceased to be his guardian. Tolkien fulfilled his promise by not writing a single line to Mary Edith until that age. They didn't even meet or talk.
On the evening of the same day, when Tolkien turned 21, he wrote a letter to Edith, where he declared his love and offered his hand and heart. Edith replied that she had already agreed to marry another person, because she decided that Tolkien had long forgotten her. In the end, she returned the wedding ring to the groom and announced that she was marrying Tolkien. In addition, at his insistence, she converted to Catholicism.
The engagement took place in Birmingham in January 1913 and the wedding March 22, 1916 in the English city of Warwick, in the Catholic Church of St. Mary. His union with Edith Brett proved to be a long and happy one. The couple lived together for 56 years and raised three sons: John Francis Reuel (1917), Michael Hilary Reuel (1920), Christopher Reuel (1924), and daughter Priscilla Mary Reuel (1929).
In 1914 Tolkien enrolled in the Military Training Corps in order to delay the call for military service and have time to get a bachelor's degree. In 1915 Tolkien graduated with honors from the university and went to serve as a lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers; soon John was called to the front and participated in the First World War.
John survived the bloody battle on the Somme, where two of his best friends from the Cheka (“tea club”) died, after which he began to hate war, fell ill with typhus and, after a long treatment, was sent home with a disability.
During his recovery at a farmhouse in Little Haywood, Staffordshire, Tolkien began work on The Book of Lost Tales, beginning with The Fall of Gondolin. Throughout 1917 and 1918 he survived several flare-ups but recovered enough to serve in various military camps and rose to the rank of lieutenant. During this time, Edith gave birth to their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien.
He devoted the following years to a scientific career: first he taught at the University of Leeds, in 1922 became professor of Anglo-Saxon language and literature at Oxford University, where he became one of the youngest professors (at 30) and soon earned a reputation as one of the best philologists in the world.
At the same time, he began to write a cycle of myths and legends of Middle-earth (Middle-Earth), which would later become The Silmarillion. There were four children in his family, for them he first composed, told, and then recorded The Hobbit, which was later published in 1937 Sir Stanley Unwin. The Hobbit was a success, and Anuin suggested that Tolkien write a sequel; however, work on the trilogy took a long time and the book was completed only in 1954 when Tolkien was about to retire.
The trilogy was published and was a huge success, which surprised both the author and the publisher. Unwin expected to lose considerable money, but he personally liked the book very much, and he was very eager to publish his friend's work. For the convenience of publication, the book was divided into three parts, so that after the publication and sale of the first part, it became clear whether it was worth printing the rest.
Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was as an assistant lexicographer. in 1919 when he joined the Oxford English Dictionary when he was discharged from the army, where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter "W". In 1920 he took up the post of Reader (similar in many respects to that of Lecturer) in English at the University of Leeds, and (of those hired) became the youngest professor there. During his time at the University, he produced a Dictionary of Middle English and published the final edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (with philologist Eric Valentine Gordon) - an edition that included the original text and commentaries, which are often confused with the translation of this work into modern English. a language later created by Tolkien along with translations of "Pearl" ("Perle" - in Middle English) and "Sir Orfeo". In 1925 Tolkien returned to Oxford, where he took ( before 1945) Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College.
While at Pembroke College, he wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings while living at 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford, where his Blue Plaque was erected in 2002. In 1932 he also published a philological essay on "Nodens" (also "Nudens" - the Celtic god of healing, the sea, hunting and dogs), continuing Sir Mortimer Wheeler when he went to excavate a Roman asklepion in Gloucestershire, at Lydney Park.
In the 1920s Tolkien took on the translation of Beowulf, which he completed in 1926 but not published. The poem was eventually edited by Tolkien's son and published by him in 2014, more than forty years after Tolkien's death and almost 90 years since its completion.
Ten years after the completion of the translation, Tolkien gave a highly acclaimed lecture on this work entitled "Beowulf: Monsters and Critics", which had a defining influence on research on Beowulf.
At the start of World War II, Tolkien was considered for the position of codebreaker. In January 1939 he was inquired about the possibility of serving in the cryptographic department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the event of an emergency. He agreed and took a course at the London headquarters of the Government Communications Centre. Be that as it may, although Tolkien was quite astute for becoming a codebreaker, he was informed in October that his services were not needed by the government for the time being. In the end, he never served again.
In 1945 Tolkien became Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford Merton College and remained in that position until his retirement. in 1959. For many years he worked as an outside examiner at University College Dublin. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland (University College Dublin was an integral part of it).
In 1948 Tolkien completed The Lord of the Rings almost a decade after the first draft. He proposed the book to Allen & Unwin. According to Tolkien's plan, The Silmarillion should have been published at the same time as The Lord of the Rings, but the publishing house did not go for it. Then in 1950 Tolkien offered his work to Collins, but publisher Milton Waldman said the novel was "in dire need of cutting back". In 1952 Tolkien again wrote to Allen & Unwin, "I would gladly consider publishing any part of the text." The publisher agreed to publish the novel in its entirety, without cuts.
Early 1960s The Lord of the Rings was released in the United States with Tolkien's permission by Ballantine Books and was a resounding commercial success. The novel fell on fertile ground: the youth of the 1960s, carried away by the hippie movement and the ideas of peace and freedom, saw in the book the embodiment of many of their dreams. In the mid 1960s"The Lord of the Rings" is experiencing a real "boom". The author himself admitted that he was flattered by success, but eventually got tired of popularity. He even had to change his phone number because the fans bothered him with calls.
In 1961 Clive S. Lewis lobbied for Tolkien's Nobel Prize in Literature. However, Swedish academics rejected the nomination with the wording that Tolkien's books "cannot be called in any way first-class prose." The Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric received the prize that year.
Tolkien also translated the book of the prophet Jonah for the publication of the "Jerusalem Bible", which was published in 1966.
After the death of his wife in 1971 Tolkien returns to Oxford.
Late 1972 he suffered greatly from indigestion, the x-ray showed dyspepsia.
September 2, 1973 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien has died at the age of eighty-one. The couple were buried in the same grave.
Works published during his lifetime:
1925
- "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (co-authored with E.B. Gordon)
1937
- The Hobbit or There and Back Again
1945
- Leaf by Niggle
1945
- The Lay of Aotrou and Itrun
1949
- Farmer Giles of Ham
1953
- The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (play)
1954-1955
- The Lord of the Rings
1954
- The Fellowship of the Ring
1954
- The Two Towers
1955
- The Return of the King
1962
- "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book" / The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (verse cycle)
1967
- The Road Goes Ever On (with Donald Swann)
1967
- Smith of Wootton Major
Published posthumously:
All posthumous editions were edited by the writer's son, Christopher Tolkien.
1976
- The Father Christmas Letters
1977
- "The Silmarillion" / The Silmarillion
1980
- Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth
1983
- The Monsters And The Critics And Others Esseys
1983-1996
- "The History of Middle-earth" / The History of Middle-earth in 12 volumes
1997
- Tales from the Perilous Realm
1998
- "Roverandom" / The Roverandom
2007
- The Children of Húrin
2009
- The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun
2009
- The History of The Hobbit
2013
- The Fall of Arthur
2014
- "Beowulf": translation and commentary / Beowulf - A Translation And Commentary
2015
- The Story of Kullervo
2017
- "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien" / Beren and Lúthien
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