... was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein, where his father headed the local office of the British bank for which he worked. His immediate ancestors were middle–class craftsmen who made and sold clocks, watches and pianos in London and Birmingham.
The Tolkiens had come originally from East Prussia, in what is now the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
When Ronald (as he was known in the family) was three years old, he travelled 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. This left the family without an income, so Tolkien's mother took her sons to live with her parents in Kings Heath, Birmingham. Soon afterwards, in 1896, they moved to Sarehole – then a Worcestershire village, but now in Hall Green, Birmingham.
Mabel Tolkien taught her two children at home. Ronald was a keen pupil; he could read by the age of four and could write fluently soon afterwards. He formed strong opinions on the books he read, such as Treasure Island, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang.
Mabel suffered from a severe form of type 1 diabetes (which was untreatable at the time), and Ronald was twelve years old when she died at the age of 34. He became a ward of Father Francis Xavier Morgan, a Catholic priest of an upper–class Welsh and Spanish background. Tolkien grew up in Edgbaston, attending King Edward's School and St Philip's School, and in 1911 he went up to Exeter College, Oxford. He graduated in 1915 with first–class honours.
He reluctantly joined the army, as a temporary Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He briefly saw active service in France (of which he wrote excoriatingly to his wife Edith – they married in March 1916). But he contracted trench fever, which was carried by lice, and was invalided home in November 1916.
He left the army four years later. His first civilian job was as a lexicographer at the Oxford English Dictionary; he then became a reader in English at Leeds University, and in 1925 he returned to Oxford as a Professor of Anglo–Saxon and a fellow of Pembroke College. It was there that he wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings.
During the Second World War (now in his late 40s) he was considered for work as a codebreaker, but in the end his services were not required. In 1945 he moved to Merton College, Oxford, as Professor of English Language and Literature. He completed The Lord of the Rings in 1948, and by the time he retired in 1959 his stories of hobbits, elves, dwarves and orcs were becoming known to the general public. He deplored being a cult figure, but regretted not retiring earlier to live off the income from his books.
Edith died in 1971, and Ronald was given rooms near Oxford High Street by Merton College. He died in 1973, aged 81, and was buried alongside his wife.
© Haydn Thompson 2023