John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the creator of Middle-earth and author of the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion was was born in 1892 in bloemfontein in the Orange Free State. He returned to England with his mother and younger brother, Hilary, in 1895. After his fathers death the family made their home in Sarehole, near Birmingham. This wonderful rural landscape made a great impression on the young Tolkien, and its effect can be seen in his later writings and paintings
His mother, Mabel, died in 1904, leaving the boys to the care of Father Francis Morgan, a priest at the Birmingham Oratory. At King Edward's School, Tolkien was taught Classics, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. Ha had a great linguistic talent, and after studying old Welsh and Finnish he started to invendt his own 'Elvish' languages.
During World War I Tolkien took up his commision as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. Before embarking for France in June 1916, he married his childhood love, Edith Bratt. Tolkien survivied the Battle of the Somme, whewre two of his tree closest friends died. Later that year he was stuck down by trench fever and invalided back to England.
The years after the Great War were devoted to his work as academis: as a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, where he was soon to prove himself one of the finest philologists in the world. He had already sratrted to write a great cycle of the myths and legends of Middle-earth wich was to become the Silmarillion . He and Edith had four Children and it was for them he first told the tale of the Hobbit , published in 1937 by sir Stanley Unwin. The Hobbit proved to be so successful that Sir Stanley Unwin was soon asking for a sequel: but it was not until 1954, when Tolkien was approaching retirement, the first volume of his great masterpiece, the Lord of the Rings, was published, and its terrific success took him by surprise.
After retirement J.R.R. Tokien and his wife moved to Bournemouth but when Edith died in 1971, Ronald returned to Oxford. He died after a brief Ilness on 2nd September 1973, leaving his great mythological work, the Silmarillion, to be edited for publication by his youngest son, Christofer Tolkien.
