An overview of Tolkien's life, prepared to accompany the March 18, 2013 Books Talk program at Gere Branch Library.

1. Gere Book Talk
March 18 2013
Kristen A.

2. 
 Born 1892 in South Africa
 His parents were English
 His father was manager of a bank
 The city was rather like a town in the Old West, it
was still developing
 His mother Mabel, didn‟t like Africa
 J.R.R. had a brother two years younger than him –
named Hilary
 They were close brothers
 Played outside often
Early Life

3. 
 April 1895, Mabel took the boys to England for a
visit.
 November 1895, she learned that Arthur had come
down with rheumatic fever.
 Early 1896, Mabel was preparing to return when she
received a telegram that he had passed away
 They stayed in England, near Birmingham
 They lived in the English countryside with
meadows, a stream, a mill and trees, later serving for
the model of The Shire
Move to England

4. 
 His mother taught him to read, and later
penmanship, Latin, French, and botany
 An uncle paid for Ronald‟s tuition at King Edward‟s
after passing the entrance exam in 1900
 The school was in town and they lived out of town
 His mother could not afford the daily train fare so they
moved closer
Early Schooling

5. 
 In 1902 Tolkien and his brother switched schools and
attended the Grammar School of St. Philip, which
was attached to a church and a community of priests
who cared for it
 It was Roman Catholic
 They moved again – just next door to the school
 It was here they meet Father Francis
 Community member and the parish priest who
became good friends with Mabel and her family
 Tolkien thought of him as a second father
Father Francis Morgan

6. 
 Even though St. Philips school was closer and
cheaper, it could not provide the same level of
education he was getting at King Edwards
 His mother tutored him and he received a
scholarship to return to King Edwards in the fall of
1903
Return to King Edwards

7. 
 April 1904, Mabel was hospitalized with diabetes
 She recovered in June enough to return home
 Father Francis Morgan arranged for her to have two
rooms in the cottage of the postman and his
wife, who cooked for them
 They were happy to be back in the country side
 The boys returned to school in the fall
 In November, Mabel passed away after going into a
diabetic coma
 Ronald was 12
Mabel passes away

8. 
 Father Francis didn‟t want to let the boys live with
their predominately Protestant family
 There was one of Mabel‟s aunts who was indifferent
to religion and lived close to their school, so he
arranged for the boys to live with her
New Arrangements

9. 
 He was very intellectual and meet similar boys at King
Edward‟s
 A group of them begun having tea in the library
 They called themselves the T.C.B.S. The Tea Club and
Barrovian Society
 Their friendships were deep and they shared hopes
ideals, projects, and encouraged each other‟s work
 There were four key members
 Tolkien – languages
 Christopher Wiseman – maths, music, composing
 R.Q. Gilson - drawing and design
 Geoffrey Bache Smith – English Literature and Poetry
T.C.B.S at King Edward‟s

10. 
 1908 Father Francis learns that the boys do not like it at their
aunt‟s house so he finds them lodging with a woman living
behind the school
 This woman had another border, Edith, who was also an
orphan, three years older than Tolkien
 At school Edith had shown talent as a pianist, but because she
had an inheritance enough to keep her, no one thought it
important or necessary to cultivate her piano skills
 They fell in love over the summer of 1909, he was 17, she 20
 They went out in secret but gossip got round to Father Francis
who told Tolkien he was not to see her anymore and made new
living arrangements
 The couple meet up again , and again Father Francis found out
and this time forbade Tolkien to even write to her, until he was
21, if he did it again he would withdraw his support
 He didn‟t give up on her
Edith

11. 
 The summer between leaving King Edward‟s and
starting at Oxford, Tolkien traveled to Switzerland
with a group of a dozen people, including his
brother
 Hilary had left school at this point and had decided to
go into agriculture, and later become a fruit farmer
 At the end of the trip, he purchased several
postcards, one of which had an old man on it
 This postcard he later wrote was the „Origin of
Gandalf‟
Trip to Switzerland

12. 
 He passed the entrance and scholarship exam to
Oxford, Father Francis helped him out with
additional funding
 Started in the fall of 1911
 He was intellectually lively, but also took part in
sports including rugby, and played pranks
 There was a class division at Oxford
 Tolkien was from working class, most other students
were of upper class, there was however a group of
„poor scholars‟ like Tolkien that were predominate in
his college of Exeter
 Also at Exeter there was a group of Roman Catholics
Student at Oxford

13. 
 Classics was his major originally but he changed to
English
 English was split into Language and Literature
 He chose Language
 Languages
 Handwriting
 Alphabets
 Mythology
 He wanted to make a mythology for English, because there
were so many tales and sagas written in ancient languages
he felt like English needed one
Interests

14. 
 On his 21st birthday (1913) he wrote to Edith asking
her to marry him
 She wrote back that she was already engaged, but
not for love
 They met up and Tolkien won her back
 They agreed to keep things a secret and not marry
until he completed his schooling
 He told Father Francis who did not oppose
 Edith was a member of the Church of England, not
Roman Catholic, as Tolkien was
 To be married she had to become one, which she
did, not because she wanted to, but for Tolkien
Reunion with Edith

15. 
 During his studies he read Anglo-Sacon
literature, one of the poems he read was called the
Crist which includes the terms Earendel and middle-
earth
 He said “I felt a curious thrill as if something had stirred
in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very
remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I
could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.”
 They sparked his imagination enough he made them
his
Finding Middle-Earth

16. 
 1914
 Tolkien was determined to finish his degree before
enlisting, but everyone else including his brother had
 He enrolled in a program that allowed him to remain studying
at Oxford but go through army training at the same time
 Christmas vacation that year he meet up with the T.C.B.C. – it
was for the last time
 Two of them died in the war
 The following June he completed his degree and was sent to
war the next month
 November 1916 he was sent to hospital with trench fever and
eventually sent home
 He started writing during this healing period
First World War

17. 
 He worked on a team creating the Oxford English
Dictionary
 He was assigned to define the words:
warm, wasp, water, wick and winter
 His first son John was born in November of 1917
 1920, he got a job at Leeds University as Reader in
English Language
 Their second son Michael was born October 1920
After the War

18. 
 He moved to Leeds by himself, leaving the family in
Oxford until Edith was ready to move in 1921
 He visited on the weekends
 Edith was not happy at first to move, but liked it when she got
there – it lacked the formality and snobbery she disliked of
Oxford and she made friends
 Tolkien was good at teaching and well liked
 He drew in students to specialize in linguistics
 He kept up his own writing
 Stories and poems that were precursors to his Lord of the
Rings work
 His tenure ended in 1924
 Their 3rd son Christopher was born in November 1924
Leeds

19. 
 He got a job in 1925 as professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford and
moved back
 The family moved around in Oxford several times but
remained in Oxford till 1968
 Student response to him was varied, but he often had students
turn up to his lectures who were not registered for the class
 The University required professors to give minimum 36
lectures or classes a year
 In his 2nd year, Tolkien gave 136 due to staff shortages
 His real work begun at this time as well when his storytelling
and languages grew to involve the people and places the
languages would have arose out of
 Their 4th child, Priscilla was born in 1929
 He retired in 1959
Back to Oxford

20. 
 “I do not like giving "facts" about myself other than "dry"
ones (which anyway are quite as relevant to my books as
any other more juicy details). Not simply for personal
reasons; but also because I object to the contemporary
trend in criticism, with its excessive interest in the details
of the lives of authors and artists. They only distract
attention from an author's works … and end … in
becoming the main interest.”
 He would however respond to serious letters from
readers about his work
Personal Life

21. 
 [Tolkien] and Edith were still very different people with widely
different interests, and even after fifty years of marriage they
were not always ideal company for each other. Occasionally
there were moments of irritation between them, just as there
had been throughout their lives. But there was still, as there
always had been, great love and affection, perhaps even more
now that the strain of bringing up a family had passed.
-from Humphrey Carpenter, authorized by Tolkien‟s heirs after his
death
 They were married 55 years until Edith passed away
in 1971, age 82, he died 2 years later, age 81
Married Life

22. 
 At Christmas times the children, as most, wrote letters to
Santa
 Tolkien would write back to them as Santa with tales of the
North Pole, creating a characters who would develop and
re-appear throughout the years
 He did this for 19 years until 1939 when the children were a
bit too old for it, and WW2 was coming
 He would tell the children stories at bed, epically if they
could not sleep
 Tom Bombadil, and early version of a Hobbit, originated
as a story for his kids as well
 He was modeled on one of Michael‟s dolls, which John had
stuffed down a toilet to be saved by Tolkien
Children‟s Stories

23. 
 Seems to have been a warm, close relationship with
all of his children
 John became a Roman Catholic priest
 Michael became a schoolmaster
 Priscilla became a social worker
 Christopher took up his father‟s work becoming his
literary executor, and editor of his un-finished work
The Children

24. 
 In a family memoir by John and Priscilla:
 Christopher was always much concerned with the consistency of
the story and on one occasion … interrupted: 'Last time, you said
Bilbo's front door was blue, and you said Thorin had a golden
tassel on this hood, but you've just said that Bilbo's front door
was green, and the tassel on Thorin's hood was silver'; at which
point Ronald exclaimed 'Damn the boy!' and strode across the
room to make a note.
 He served the WW2 in South Africa, then returned to
Oxford
 He was a member of his father‟s club the Inklings and it
was he not his father who read new sections of Lord of
the Rings to them for review
Christopher Tolkien

25. 
 the person most likely to know what he was about. And
the knowledge that he wanted me to be his literary
executor gave me the confidence to do it. I could not help
him in his lifetime as much as I wished, for just to sort out
his papers, which were in an enormous mess, would have
meant asking him to step aside from them for a year or
two. Since his death I've seen far more of his total literary
and moral purpose than before. I've had his whole opus
spread out in front of me, letters, papers, essays—and
more than he ever had, because of the confusion the papers
were in.
Christopher Tolkien

26. 
 They were friends for about 40 years
 They met in 1926 at an English Department tea
 Lewis was as important as Tolkien‟s children were in the
development of Lord of the Rings
 They were both members of the Inklings were members
could read their works in progress and get advise and
opinions
 A later life version of the T.C.B.S.
 The group met at a pub called The Eagle and Child
 It was to this group that Tolkien read The Hobbit & Lord of
the Rings and Lewis Out of the Silent Planet
C.S. Lewis

27. 
 The friends had differing views on religion
 Tolkien was Roman Catholic, Lewis was Protestant
 Lewis could not accept Tolkien‟s religious views and
Tolkien could not accept Lewis‟s
 They also had different views as to what mythology
was
 Lewis thought it a kind of lie
 Tolkien took it as a way of showing the truth
 They drifted apart to the point that when Lewis got
married Tolkien didn‟t know till he read it in the
paper
C.S. Lewis

28. 
 When he begin writing The Hobbit is un-known, but it was
Tolkien family story like the Santa story that was told in
many forms many a time
 It did start sometime in the early 1930‟s with the sentence
“ In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” and
everything spiraled from there
 It was a children‟s story, which Lewis said was good, but
was not sure children would like it
 He had written an incomplete version of it that his family
and few others knew about
 One person who did know about it was family friend and
ex-student Elaine Griffiths, who worked at a publishing
firm, who told a collouge Susan Dagnall about it
The Hobbit

29. 
 Dagnall borrowed the manuscript from Tolkien, read it
and asked him to finish it for publication
 October 1936 it was finished
 At the publishing firm – Allen & Unwin – the chairman
tested it out on his 10 year old son Rayner
 He approved and was paid a shilling for his work
 Rayner later took over the firm and was responsible for the
publication of Lord of the Rings
 It was published September 1937 and was sold out before
the start of Christmas
 It was published in the United States soon after
Hobbit

30. 
 Tolkien was eager to see The Silmarillon published so
when asked for a sequel to The Hobbit, he put this forth as
well as Lord of the Rings, to Allen and Unwin in 1937
 He was told that is wasn‟t what they were looking for in a
sequel
 He put it forth to Collins as well who were also looking to
publish The Hobbit‟s sequel – this time he only submitted
The Silmarillion
 He was told they would publish if he finished it
 Tolkien then offered them Lord of the Rings
 He was later so busy with other projects he never finished
this – even thought it was most important to him
The Silmarillion

31. 
 He was upset with Unwin whose son, Rayner had been
the child to approve The Hobbit, had said in a letter not
intended for Tolkien to see, that he didn‟t think The
Silmarillion should be published
 While he was very upset it meant he was under no
obligation to Allen & Unwin, and could have Collins
publish his work
 Because The Silmarillion was not yet complete he had a
similar situation all over again with Collins
 He received a letter from Rayner asking about his
publication plans – he had calmed down by now and
published it with the first company Allen & Unwin
Publications

32.  When he started writing LOTR in the late 1930‟s, is was to be just as light and aimed
at children as The Hobbit
 He ran into some problems when he tried brining in The Silmarillion to the sequel
 Once it really started moving though, Aug 1938 he wrote:
 In the last two or three days, after the benefit of idleness and open air, and the sanctioned
neglect of duty, I have begun again on the sequel to the "Hobbit"—The Lord of the Ring. It is
now flowing along and getting quite out of hand. It has reached about Chapter VII and
progresses toward quite unforeseen goals. I must say I think it is a good deal better in places
and some ways than the predecessor; but that does not say that I think it either more suitable
or more adapted for its audience. For one thing it is, like my own children (who have the
immediate serial rights), rather "older".… If the weather is wet in the next fortnight we may
have got still further on. But it is no bed-time story.
 A month later clarifying:
 When I spoke, in an earlier letter to Mr. Furth, of this sequel getting "out of hand", I did not
mean it to be complimentary to the process. I really only meant it was … becoming more
terrifying than The Hobbit. It may prove quite unsuitable. It is more "adult".… The darkness
of the present days has had some effect on it.
 He does refer here to the beginning of WW2 but he believed his work was a
mythology, a truth to be applied to many situations, not a fantasy version of a real
war
Beginnings of Lord of the Rings

33. 
 They divided it into the three parts
 They felt it was a bit risky so they told Tolkien he would
get no money until the publishing costs had been
recovered then they money would be split 50/50
 Part 1 & 2 were out in 1954, part 3 in 1955
 They printed 3.5 thousand copies of book 1 which sold
out in 6 weeks
 The printing costs were regained a year after the 3rd book
came out
 He finally got paid in 1956, his first check for £35,000
Lord of the Rings Publication

34. 
 1965, American Publisher Ace printed an unofficial
version of Lord of the Rings, U.S copyright laws at the time
permitted this
 The official American publisher, Houghton Mifflin /
Ballantine Books realized they needed a superior edition
to compete
 It took time do this and by the time they got it, Ace Books
were already selling
 Tolkien received a lot of fan mail and began adding to
each letter he responded to, asking people to buy the
official one, that he approved of and was getting paid for
 It worked, and the Sci-Fi Writers of America put pressure
on Ace who agreed to cease printing it
American Publishing

35. Information from www.tolkienlibrary.com
Sep. 5, 2012 by Pieter Collier

36. 
Crater on Mercury
The International Astronomical Union
(IAU) approved a proposal to assign
names to nine impact craters on the planet
Mercury.
Mercury's north polar region is of high
scientific interest because of the shadowed
craters there that host radar-bright
deposits that may consist of water ice. All
of the nine newly named craters host such
deposits. In keeping with the established
naming theme for craters on Mercury, they
are all named after famous deceased
artists, musicians, or authors or other
contributors to the humanities.
One of the craters has been named in
honour of JRR Tolkien.

37. 
Asteroid 2675 Tolkien
2675 Tolkien is a small main belt asteroid, which
was discovered by M. Watt on April 14, 1982 at
the Anderson Mesa station, which is operated by
the Lowell Observatory.
Asteroid Tolkien sticks between Jupiter and
Mars with no propensity to ever cross the Earth.
Tolkien has an absolute magnitude (brightness)
of 12.5. You can only see up to magnitude 6.0
with your bare eyes, unfortunately. And the
asteroid is probably much, much fainter than
even that from our position on Earth. You'll
probably need some mega-telescope to glimpse
it.
To honour J.R.R. Tolkien some more the same
person M. Watt named the second asteroid he
discovered 'Bilbo'. 2291 Bilbo is also a main-belt
asteroid and was discovered on April 21, 1982.

38. 
Tolkien Neighbourhood
In the Dutch town of Geldrop, near
Eindhoven in The Netherlands, the streets
of an entire neighbourhood are named
after Tolkien himself (Tolkien Avenue)
and some of the best-known characters
from his books. The neighbourhood was
built in 1998 to 2000 and exists of 107
exclusive houses, designed by the architect
office Van den Pauwert.
The neighbourhood is full of streets
named after the characters from J.R.R.
Tolkien's Legendarium, while the main
road is named Tolkien Avenue (Dutch:
Laan van Tolkien). Though the
neighbourhood has streets with names of
lesser known characters as Farin, Cirion
and Silmariën, there is no street named
after one of the best known
characters, Bilbo Baggins.

39. 
Tolkien Tree
In 2006 the Wilderness Committee launched a
preservation campaign to force the Canadian government
to take urgent action and ban old growth logging: Protect
Vancouver Island's Ancient Forests.
Two of Canada's widest trees were recently discovered by
the Wilderness Committee in the Upper Walbran Valley
And of all the places and things named after Tolkien this
was probably the biggest honour ever, one of the old trees
was named after the author Tolkien.
It is not just an old tree, but it is a giant old tree! The
ancient cedar named "Tolkien Giant" measures 4.76 m
(15.7 ft) in diameter.
Ken Wu, who is pictured beside this magnificent
unprotected big tree, reminds us: "We're so incredibly
fortunate here to have these gargantuan sized old growth
trees still growing in wilderness ecosystems." The
senseless killing of these last big trees is an ecological
crime that has yet to be fully exposed.
Let us hope Giant Tolkien lives on and on, and when all
rooms, pubs, houses, boats are long gone and forgotten.. I
secretly hope Giant Tolkien will still be around and
inspire people just like the author does.

40. Information from www.tolkienlibrary.com
Aug. 29, 2012 by Imogen Reed

41. 
The Lauterbrunnen
Valley, Switzerland
When Tolkien sat down and sketched
many of the locations from Middle-
earth, the startling similarity between
his drawing of the Elvish outpost
Rivendell and the actual pictorial
landscape of Lauterbrunnen is easily
evident. It is no surprise to find out
that Tolkien travelled to the valley
during his late teens where he must
have been captivated by the rolling
hills and river Weisse Lütschine
cutting its way through the
valley, which probably formed the
inspiration for the Bruinen River
(River Loudwater) of Middle-earth.

42. 
Tolkien‟s Home in
Oxford
Just as important as Birmingham
where Tolkien grew up, Oxford is
where he
lived, worked, socialised and
died. Oxford is also the place
where Tolkien wrote Lord of the
Rings. Only a blue plaque
signifies the importance of 20
Northmoor Road in North
Oxford where Tolkien penned his
famous works. However, as it
took him 17 years to complete the
Lord of the Rings and Hobbit in
its cramped rooms, the
unimposing cottage is certainly a
must see for any Tolkien fan.

43. 
The Eagle and Child
Tolkien was a keen drinker and
enjoyed public houses. In
Oxford, his local was the Eagle
and Child where the great man
drank for over 30 years. He was
a regular within the pub's walls
and often spent time with other
literary figures of the age such
as CS Lewis. Tolkien, Lewis and
other writers, formed a literary
club known as the
Inklings, who would read
passages of each other's work in
the pub, which is now
commemorated by a plaque.

44. 
The Somme
Tolkien was one of the unfortunate many that
fought in the Battle of the Somme in Northern
France during the First World War, the events of
which had a huge impact on his life and beliefs.
As a serving Signalling officer for the 11th
Battalion of The Lancashire Fusiliers, Tolkien lost
many friends, including school chums Robert
Gilson and Geoffrey Bache Smith. Tolkien
himself was probably saved by contracting
trench fever, which forced him to return to
England to convalesce. However, the war
affected him greatly. He wrote many times on his
hatred for war, whatever the cause, which is
particularly evident to the letters sent to his
son, Christopher during the Second World War.
Perhaps his descriptions of the desolation
following the battles in the Silmarillion owe
much to his wartime experiences, in
particular, the devastating effect of Morgoth's
monstrous iron dragons, which perhaps owe
homage to the use of tanks for the first time
during the Battle of the Somme.