Tolkien’s Birthday – January 3, 1892
Jan 3, 2024 22:59:39 GMT
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Post by mikef6 on Jan 3, 2024 22:59:39 GMT
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontien, Orange Free State (later incorporated into South Africa). His father, Arthur Tolkien, was a bank officer. Mabel Suffield was his mother. The two sons J.R.R and brother Hilary were descendants from German piano maker immigrants. In 1895, Mabel returned to their home in England – for a healthier climate - and took the two children with her. Arthur died the next year in 1896, still in Orange Free State.
His gift for languages probably came, genetically, from his mother who began to teach Tolkien at an early age. He was already advanced in Greek and Latin when he began formal schooling. Also knew some French and German. He began school at King Edward’s School in Birmingham. While still at King Edward’s he discovered a grammar of Goth. Goth is East Germanic. (English is derived from West Germanic). He began to write poetry in Gothic.
His two major invented languages are: 1) Quena, the Language of the High Elves. It is based on the phonology (sounds) of Finnish. 2) Sindarin, the language of the regular Elves, is based on Welsh. Tolkien always claimed that his entire invented mythology was created to have someone to speak his made-up languages.
Most of Tolkien’s university graduating class were killed in WWI, including his best friends. Tolkien himself almost died from trench fever (carried by lice). It took him several years to fully recover.
In 1925 a prestigious professorship opened at Oxford. He applied and got it over more experienced teachers including a former tutor of his. There he met C.S. Lewis and with Lewis and others, he met regularly at the Eagle and Child pub where they read works to each other. They called themselves the Inklings.
The Hobbit was published in 1937. There was an immediate clamor for a sequel, but World War II (plus Tolkien’s perfectionism) delayed a new book until the 1950s. Because of its length, the saga was published in three volumes released in July 1954, November 1954, and October 1955. In later years, his friend C.S. Lewis nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He retired in 1959 and died on September 2, 1973.
A personal note: I have read the entire LOTR many, many times, including out loud, twice – for each of my sons as they got old enough. One of the first things I did when the country shut down in 2020 was to read through my one-volume edition (I also read the complete Sherlock Holmes in an annotated edition, so had a productive reading isolation).
A new recommended book is Tolkien In The Twenty-First Century: The Meaning Of Middle-Earth Today by Nick Groom. Simon & Schuster, 2023.
His gift for languages probably came, genetically, from his mother who began to teach Tolkien at an early age. He was already advanced in Greek and Latin when he began formal schooling. Also knew some French and German. He began school at King Edward’s School in Birmingham. While still at King Edward’s he discovered a grammar of Goth. Goth is East Germanic. (English is derived from West Germanic). He began to write poetry in Gothic.
His two major invented languages are: 1) Quena, the Language of the High Elves. It is based on the phonology (sounds) of Finnish. 2) Sindarin, the language of the regular Elves, is based on Welsh. Tolkien always claimed that his entire invented mythology was created to have someone to speak his made-up languages.
Most of Tolkien’s university graduating class were killed in WWI, including his best friends. Tolkien himself almost died from trench fever (carried by lice). It took him several years to fully recover.
In 1925 a prestigious professorship opened at Oxford. He applied and got it over more experienced teachers including a former tutor of his. There he met C.S. Lewis and with Lewis and others, he met regularly at the Eagle and Child pub where they read works to each other. They called themselves the Inklings.
The Hobbit was published in 1937. There was an immediate clamor for a sequel, but World War II (plus Tolkien’s perfectionism) delayed a new book until the 1950s. Because of its length, the saga was published in three volumes released in July 1954, November 1954, and October 1955. In later years, his friend C.S. Lewis nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He retired in 1959 and died on September 2, 1973.
A personal note: I have read the entire LOTR many, many times, including out loud, twice – for each of my sons as they got old enough. One of the first things I did when the country shut down in 2020 was to read through my one-volume edition (I also read the complete Sherlock Holmes in an annotated edition, so had a productive reading isolation).
A new recommended book is Tolkien In The Twenty-First Century: The Meaning Of Middle-Earth Today by Nick Groom. Simon & Schuster, 2023.