Tolkien did not like biographies or, more properly, did not like that they are used as a form of literary criticism. and in more than one occasion expressed such a biography was saying the worst way to see the work of an author. However, he had no doubt aware that the remarkable popularity of his stories became very likely that a dead time to write his biography.
Aware of this, however, we dare to present a short summary of his life with the sole purpose of providing information to those just getting closer to the author.
Young Tolkien:
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa 3 January 1892 and his brother, Hilary Arthur, born in 1894. They were taken by her mother, Mabel Tolkien, to England after the death of his father, Arthur Tolkien, in 1896. His mother changes the Anglican to the Catholic religion and his two sons follow. In 1904 his mother dies from diabetes when he was only 34 years old. The brothers go to live with an aunt in Birmingham, but Mabel’s confessor, Father Francis Morgan, who is entrusted with the care and education for them. Since then John Ronald more fervently embraced Catholicism.
He studied at King Edward School in Birmingham, in the Saint Philip Grammar School and the University of Oxford. In 1915 he graduated with honors degree in English language and literature.
WAR, MARRIAGE AND LITERATURE:
In 1915 she also enlisted in the British army. Before she had to go to France to fight in World War I, he married Edith Bratt, the bride of his youth. Tolkien was in the Battle of the Somme as a second lieutenant and then ill with trench fever, which kept him hospitalized for most of the year 1917. During that year his first child was born, John and starts
write the Book of Lost Tales (Book of Lost Tales), which contains the stories of the early days.
Promoted to lieutenant and assigned to Staffordshire. After the war he returned with his family to Oxford, where it joins the group that produced the New English Dictionary. In 1920 born his second son, Michael, born in 1924 his third son, Christopher was born in 1929 and his youngest daughter, Priscilla.
From an early age, Tolkien was interested in language, especially those in northern Europe and from there came one of his hobbies: inventing languages. His main professional interest was the study of Anglo-Saxon language and its relation to other languages of the same origin. He was an expert in the literature that was written in those languages. He was professor of English at the University of Leeds (1924) and Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University (1925-1945).
Tolkien and E. V. Gordon published Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in 1925. During the year 1926 meets C.S. Lewis and make a friendship with him.
Tolkien also gave major conferences, which include Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics), 1936, which justifies the presence of mythological creatures as the monster Grendel and the dragon in this medieval poem On Fairy-Stories (Fairy Tale) in 1939, where he outlined his critical theory of fantasy.
BORN THE HOBBIT AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS:
His interest in languages, myths and stories of heroes strongly influenced his work. Legends of the Early Days were the basis for his most famous works: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and languages he had invented.
The first version of The Hobbit is published in 1937 and began writing what would later be The Lord of the Rings, working tirelessly on this project throughout the Second World War. The Lord of the Rings is not completed until 1948 and published the first two volumes in 1954 and third in 1955. As the trilogy progressed, there were some changes in the nature of the ring that Bilbo found in The Hobbit and which were inconsistent with the new idea that Tolkien had that same ring, so I rewrote an entire chapter of The Hobbit, so that they coincide the new features in the ring between a book and another.
In 1959 he retired as professor Tolkien.
Published in 1949 Farmer Giles of Ham (Farmer Giles of Ham) in 1962 The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil), 1964 Tree and Leaf (Tree and leaf) and in 1967 The Road goes ever on ( The road goes on and on) and Smith of Wooton Major (El Herrero de Wooton Major)
THE BEGINNING OF A LEGEND:
In 1965 he published the American paperback of The Lord of the Rings. Start the cult novel on college campuses and displayed on the walls of many cities worldwide graffiti alluding to the characters in these books.
In 1968, Tolkien moved to Poole, near Bournemouth and Edith Tolkien died in 1971 at 82 years of age. One year after the death of his wife, Tolkien returned to Oxford and get the hands of Queen Isabel the Cross of the British Empire.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien died at 81 years old on September 2, 1973. His son Christopher is responsible for publishing works that his father could not publish in life in 1977 as The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales (Unfinished Tales) in 1980 and more.
COMPANY DEDICATED TO THE STUDY AND DISSEMINATION OF THE WORK OF TOLKIEN:
The first idea of forming a society dedicated to the study of Tolkien’s work dates from 1965. Richard Plotz, a student of fifteen years studying science at Columbia University, he saw “something written in Elvish in a train station sign. It should be Elvish, but I could not believe it. Who would be able to write in Elvish? . A week after the inscription had disappeared, but another person had written Bilbo Baggins is probably a fraud. ” Written dialogue that continued for several weeks until Plotz felt compelled to add: The Tolkien Club meets at the statue of Alma Mater at two pm on February 5. A week later, six students, none of which was known, challenging the very low temperature, met for an hour at the foot of the statue. Thus arose the Tolkien Society, which later merge with what is now the Mythopoeic Society, a group dedicated to the world’s largest Tolkien. The British Tolkien Society was not established until 1968.
Currently, there are groups dedicated to Tolkien in 25 countries. In 1993 he published over 100 titles between fanzines and magazines on this author (not including books or RPGs). Some associations have for many years active: Unquendor (Netherlands), Arthedain-Norges Tolkienforening (Norway) or Parmadili (Poland). Others emerged as a consequence or anticipation of the centenary: the Danmarks Tolkienforening (Denmark), Suomen Tolkien-Seura (Finland). Many countries have a single association with various local sites (as in Spain). Others, however, have numerous independent associations.
Thus, in the U.S. find American bands like The Hobbit Association, American Mensa Tolkien Special Interest Group, the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship (extremely specialized in studies of the Elvish tongue), The Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor and the Commomnwealth of Esgaroth (chaired by a as Sir John Houghton, the Duke of Númenor), veteran Mythopoeic Society (who also studies the works of Charles Williams and CS Lewis), and the New England Tolkien Society (which maintains more ties abroad), each with many subsites. Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Czech Republic and Slovakia are among the countries that have recently joined this kind of “Tolkien International Community.” The Nordic countries are kept in close touch including Norway, Finland and Denmark have only one association per country, but Sweden has four distinct groups. The many groups that have appeared in the former USSR are perhaps the most active and revolutionary: to 300 fans have come to meet in their Hobbit Games, which last a week, living, dressing and playing the way of Middle Earth.
Actually, the work of this author awakens each day more fervently. As happens to many writers, Tolkien has become more famous and respected when he was alive. Even at the time of first publication of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, these works were received with indifference or rejection by the English literary criticism. Common, too, for works of fantasy.
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