What year was Tolkien born. English writer John Tolkien: biography, creativity, the best books. Tolkien's published books and legends
J.R.R.Tolkien(full name - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien / John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) (1892-1973) - English writer. The books "The Hobbit or There and Back" and "The Lord of the Rings" brought him fame, although he published many other works. After his death, the book The Silmarillion was published on the basis of the surviving records; his other texts were subsequently published, and they continue to be published at the present time.
The name John was traditionally given in the Tolkien family to the eldest son of the eldest son. His mother named him Ronald - instead of Rosalind (she thought that a girl would be born). Close relatives usually called him Ronald, and friends and colleagues called him John or John Ronald. Ruel is the last name of a friend of Tolkien's grandfather. This name was borne by Tolkien's father, Tolkien's brother, Tolkien himself, as well as all his children and grandchildren. Tolkien himself noted that this name is found in the Old Testament (in the Russian tradition - Raguel). Tolkien was often referred to by his initials JRRT, especially in his later years. He liked to sign with a monogram of these four letters.
1891 March Mabel Suffield, Tolkien's mother-to-be, leaves England for South Africa. On April 16, Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien are getting married in Cape Town. They go to live in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Boer Orange Republic (now part of South Africa).
1894 February 17 Hillary Arthur Ruel Tolkien, second son of Mabel and Arthur, is born in Bloemfontein.
1896 February 15 Arthur Tolkien unexpectedly dies of illness in Africa. Mabel Tolkien and her children remain with their parents. In the summer, Mabel Tolkien rents an apartment with the children and lives separately with the children.
1900 Spring Mabel Tolkien converts to the Catholic faith (with her children), resulting in quarrels with most of her family. In the fall, Tolkien goes to school.
1902 Father Francis Xavier Morgan, Tolkien's future guardian, becomes Mabel Tolkien's confessor.
1904 November 14 Mabel Tolkien dies of diabetes, Francis's father, by her will, becomes the guardian of her children.
1908 Tolkien, sixteen, meets 19-year-old Edith Brett, his future wife.
1909 Upon learning of Tolkien's novel, Father Francis forbids him to communicate with Edith until he comes of age (twenty-one).
Tolkien has achieved considerable success on the school rugby team.
1913 On January 3, Tolkien comes of age and proposes to Edith Brett. Edith breaks off her engagement to another and accepts Tolkien's offer.
1914 January 8 Edith Brett converts to the Catholic faith for Tolkien. The engagement takes place shortly. On September 24, Tolkien writes the poem "The Journey of Earendel", which is considered the beginning of mythology, the development of which he later devoted his whole life.
1915 July Tolkien receives a bachelor's degree from Oxford and enlists as a junior lieutenant in the Lancashire Rifle Regiment.
1916 Tolkien studies to become a signalman. He is appointed as a battalion signalman. Tolkien and Edith Brett are married on March 22 in Warwick.
On June 4, Tolkien departs for London and from there to the war in France. On July 15, Tolkien (as a signalman) takes part in the battle for the first time. On October 27, Tolkien falls ill with "trench fever" and is returned to England. He himself never fought again.
1917 January-February Tolkien, recovering, begins to write "The Book of Lost Tales" - the future "Silmarillion". November 16 Tolkien's eldest son, John Francis Ruel is born.
1920 Fall Tolkien gets a job teaching English at the University of Leeds and moves to Leeds. October Tolkien's second son, Michael Hilary Ruel, is born.
1924 Tolkien becomes professor of English language in Leeds. November 21 The third is born, younger son Tolkien, Christopher John Ruel.
1925 Tolkien is elected professor of Old English at Oxford and moves there with his family early the following year.
1926 Tolkien meets and becomes friends with Clive Lewis (future famous writer).
1929 end of year Tolkien's only daughter, Priscilla Mary Ruelle, is born.
1930-33 Tolkien writes The Hobbit.
In the early 30s. an informal literary club "Inklings" gathers around Lewis, which includes Tolkien and other people who later became famous writers.
1936 The Hobbit is accepted for publication.
1937 21 September The Hobbit is published by Allen & Unwin. The book is a success and the publishers are asking for a sequel. Tolkien offers them The Silmarillion, but the publishers want a book about the hobbits. By December 19, Tolkien is writing the first chapter of the sequel to The Hobbit, the future Lord of the Rings.
1949 Fall Tolkien completes the main text of The Lord of the Rings. He does not want to give it to Allen & Unwin, because they refused to print The Silmarillion and in 1950-52 tries to give The Lord of the Rings together with The Silmarillion to Collins, which initially shows interest.
1952 Collins refuses to publish The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien agrees to give it to Allen & Unwin.
1954 July 29 The first volume of The Lord of the Rings is published in England. November 11 The second volume of The Lord of the Rings is released in England. Tolkien is required to urgently complete the appendices, which should be published in the third volume.
1955 October 20 The third volume of The Lord of the Rings is published in England with appendices, but without an alphabetical index.
1959 Summer Tolkien retires.
It's no secret that the universe that John Tolkien created in his books and manuscripts is one of the most thoroughly worked out, and therefore the most interesting and deepest literary universes. Studying all its nuances is a real test of strength. However, if you want to navigate in all the variety of Tolkien plots - from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to The Silmarillion and other Hurins, then our new material will be of interest to you. After reading this article, you will stop wandering around Tolkien's world, like in a deep forest, and set off on a free voyage according to the fantasy of one of the richest minds of the last century.
Foreword
On September 2, 1973, John Tolkien passed away, leaving behind an immense collection of manuscripts, notes and memos. Christopher Tolkien, the son of a writer, devoted his entire life to editing and publishing his father's notes. During his lifetime, Tolkien managed to publish only two of his key works - The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Both of these books, in turn, relied on a wide layer of legends and legends, some of which Tolkien wrote in full, some of which he composed schematically and in excerpts. Moreover, Tolkien regularly updated and rewrote most of the records about his universe throughout his life, sometimes changing not only names and titles, but also the course of events. Christopher Tolkien has done a truly titanic work, editing and publishing to date almost all the traditions from the world of Middle-earth.
John Ronald Ruel Tolkien
Remarkably, Tolkien wrote a small excursion into his universe himself - in a letter to Milton Waldman of Collins, dated late 1951. In this rather voluminous letter, which is often published as a preface to The Silmarillion, Tolkien not only explained how the events of his universe are connected, but also told how the idea of the entire cycle of his works was born. For this article, we will mainly rely on this letter, and we recommend that the most dedicated fans of Middle-earth read it in full.
Towards the Creation of Middle-earth
It all started, as Tolkien himself wrote, with two hobbies: young John loved to invent new languages (and, having become a professional philologist, only strengthened his skills) and burned with a passion for myths and fairy tales, especially heroic legends. However, Tolkien was saddened by the almost complete absence of worthy legends in his homeland, England:
There is an epic Greek and Celtic, Romanesque, Germanic, Scandinavian and Finnish (the latter made a strong impression on me); but absolutely nothing English, except for cheap editions of folk tales.
Beowulf is the hero of the epic poem of the same name that influenced Tolkien
Actually, Tolkien's original idea was to create a cycle of legends - from legends of a global, cosmogonic scale to a romantic fairy tale - that he could devote to England.
... possessing (if only I could achieve this) that magical, elusive beauty, which some call Celtic (although it is rarely found in the original works of the ancient Celts), these legends should be "exalted", cleansed of all crude and obscene and correspond to more to the mature mind of the earth, imbued with poetry since ancient times. I would present some legends in full, but I would outline many only schematically, as part of the general idea.
The First World War, in the battles of which the writer was directly involved, had a great influence on Tolkien's work. Having gone to the reserve and deeply impressed by the destructive war, in 1916-1917 Tolkien began work on The Book of Lost Tales - a work that was left unfinished, but included the first prototypes of those myths and legends that later made up The Silmarillion. The first of Tolkien's key plots was "The Fall of Gondolin", which we will discuss in more detail below.
Tolkien's published books and legends
Here is a list of the major works of Tolkien's universe, with the year of the first edition:
- The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937)
- The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955)
- The Silmarillion (1977)
- Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth (1980)
- The Children of Hurin (2007)
- Beren and Luthien (2017)
- The Fall of Gondolin (to be published 2018)
It is these books that make up the main legendarium of Middle-earth. During his lifetime, John Tolkien published only the first two books. "The Silmarillion" and other publications are the merit of his son Christopher, who took responsibility for realizing his father's original plans.
Separately, it is worth noting the 12-volume edition of Tolkien's manuscripts:
- The History of Middle-earth (1983-1996)
This edition cannot be unequivocally attributed to the main legendarium, since it contains many original manuscripts, which were subsequently rewritten and modified. Most of the volumes of The History of Middle-earth are only of research interest for fans of Tolkien and are not recommended for an unprepared reader.
The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales
The main part of the legends about the creation and structure of Arda (the world of Middle-earth), as well as detailed description The events of the First Age are recounted in The Silmarillion, a book that many call the Bible of Middle-earth. The content of this book is divided into several important parts:
- "Ainulindale", or "Music of Ainur" - a myth about the creation of the world;
- "Valaquenta" - a description of the Valar and Mayar, the divine essences of Arda;
- "Quenta Silmarillion", or "History of the Silmarils" - the main section of the book, describing the initial events of the world and the events of the First Age, which started soon after the creation of the Sun and Moon;
- "Akallabet", or "Overthrow of Numenor" - a legend about the central events of the Second Age;
- "On the Rings of Power and the Third Age" - short description the events of the Second and Third Ages, affecting the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Morgoth and Fingolfin. Drawing by John Hove
The Silmarillion is, in fact, Short story Middle-earth, which ties together all of Tolkien's plots. This is a kind of single plot tree, some of the branches of which turned out to be much more developed than others and turned into separate full-fledged works.
The cycles begin with a cosmogonic myth: The Music of Ainur. God and Valar (or powers; in English, called gods) are manifested. The latter are a kind of angelic forces, each Valar is called upon to fulfill its specific task. Immediately after that, we turn to Tale of the Elves.
It tells of the fall of the elves, which closely resembles the Christian fall of the angels.
The Silmarillion tells how the elves were expelled from Valinor (the abode of the Gods, a kind of Paradise), how they returned to their homeland - Middle-earth, and how fiercely they fought the Enemy. The title of the book was chosen for a reason - the fate and essence of the Primordial Gems, or Silmarils, becomes the connecting thread for all events.
The main villain of The Silmarillion is Melkor (Morgoth), the enemy of the Valar gods and the personification of the world's evil. Many wars thundered at the beginning of time and during the First Age through the fault of Morgoth, but The Silmarillion ends with the final capture and expulsion of the villain from Arda.
Attack on Nargothrond. Drawing by Pete Amahri
In the book The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, published three years later, Christopher Tolkien included those plots of his father that were not completed, but importantly complemented the legendarium of The Silmarillion. Distinctive feature The "unfinished traditions" are that they focused around the events of the Second and Third Ages.
Together, The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales constitute the most important collection of legends in Tolkien's universe, upon which the masterpiece The Lord of the Rings is based.
Children of Hurin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin
In addition to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had several other stories that he considered key to his universe. Christopher Tolkien dedicated separate books to the three most important of them - "great legends", as the writer himself called them, despite the fact that all these plots in one form or another were part of the "Silmarillion".
The Children of Hurin, published in April 2007, deals primarily with the adventures of Turin Turambar and greatly expands chapter 21 of The Silmarillion. Having started writing the book in 1918, Tolkien worked on it for most of his life and never got it published. Christopher Tolkien spent thirty years putting together the scattered sketches and with minimal revisions to recreate a complete book. So the general public learned about the high and tragic fate of Turin Turambar - the killer of the dragon Glaurung and, through ignorance, the husband of his own sister.
The murder of Glaurung. Drawing by Ted Nesmith
Tolkien considered the legend “Beren and Lúthien” to be the central plot of his entire life - the love story of a mortal man and an immortal elf woman, the creation of which was significantly influenced by a real love story between the writer and his future wife Edith.
The main story of The Silmarillion, and the most detailed, is The Tale of Beren and the Elven Maiden Luthien.
Here, among other things, we first encounter the following motive (in The Hobbit it will become dominant): the great events of world history - the "wheels of the world" - are often rotated not by lords and rulers, but by simple and unknown heroes. Beren, an outcast from the mortal line, with the help of Luthien - a weak maiden, albeit a royal family, achieves success where all armies and warriors have failed: he penetrates the Enemy's stronghold and obtains one of the Silmarils of the Iron Crown. Thus, he wins the hand of Luthien, and the first marriage of a mortal and an immortal is concluded.
Unlike The Children of Hurin, the book Beren and Luthien, published by Christopher in 2017, contains practically no new material and is a collection of several versions of the legend already known from The Silmarillion.
Luthien. Drawing by Ted Nesmith
A similar approach will be applied in the book "The Fall of Gondolin" - in it we will see several versions of the same legend. The Fall of Gondolin is, in fact, Tolkien's first work on Middle-earth, inspired by the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War.
Gondolin is a secret elven city built by King Turgon during the First Age. It was built surrounded by mountains, where only one secret passage leads. This path was revealed to Turgon by the lord of the waters of Ulmo, one of the Valar. Construction lasted half a century, and the city stood for about 400 years, until one day Turgon's nephew Maeglin revealed his location to Morgoth. Maeglin loved Idril, the daughter of Turgon, but she refused him, and the Eldar did not approve of the marriages of such close relatives. The lust for power, rejected feelings and hatred for Tuor - the man who took Idril as his wife - forced Maeglin to betray.
Tuor comes to Gondolin. Drawing by Ted Nesmith
Thus, by 2018, Christopher Tolkien had completed the publication of all the key works of his father and summed up the development of the legendarium of Middle-earth. We can only take off our hat in front of Christopher and give him a deep bow for dedication and boundless diligence.
The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
Here we got to the main works of Tolkien, known to the whole world - the books "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". The events of these books take place at the end of the Third Age of Middle-earth - several millennia after the events of the three "great tales". The outlines of Middle-earth changed greatly, part of the mainland was destroyed.
The fallen banner of Morgoth was picked up by his powerful servant Sauron, and because of his wiles the human race suffered many troubles. The key event of the Second Age was the destruction of the island of Numenor: the legend of the Akallabeth, included in the Silmarillion, tells about this. The people who survived the disaster moved to Middle-earth and founded the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor there. Over the course of the Third Age, Arnor gradually faded away and fell under the onslaught of the forces of evil, and Gondor became the main target of Sauron in his war, which was called the War of the Ring and formed the basis of the book "The Lord of the Rings".
The overthrow of Numenor. Drawing by John Hove
One of the main events of the Second Age of Middle-earth is the creation of the rings of power. This story is recounted in the final section of The Silmarillion. Sauron tricked the elves who remained in Middle-earth to create rings of power to slow down the elven "decline." At the same time, the rings strengthened the innate abilities of the owner, and also had some other properties: for example, they made material objects invisible and visible - the essence of the invisible world.
The elves of Eregion created, almost exclusively by the power of their own imaginations, without prompting, Three unspeakably beautiful and powerful rings designed to preserve beauty: these did not endow invisibility. But secretly, in the underground Fire, in his Black Land, Sauron created the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, which contained the properties of all others and controlled them, so that the wearer could see the thoughts of all those who used the smaller rings, could control all of them. actions and ultimately could completely and completely enslave them. However, Sauron did not take into account the wisdom and keen discernment of the elves. As soon as he put on the One Ring, the elves learned about it, comprehended his secret plan and were afraid. They hid the Three Rings, so that even Sauron could not find them, and they remained undefiled. The elves tried to destroy the rest of the Rings.
Sauron forges the One Ring. Image from the game Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
A war broke out that plunged Middle-earth into darkness. The War of the Last Alliance ended the history of the Second Age. Elves and people united against Sauron and destroyed his material shell, ridding him of the Ring of Power. However, by an unfortunate omission, the ring was not destroyed, and it was this fact that gave rise to the development of events in the books "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings".
Sauron in the War of the Last Alliance. Drawing by Matt DeMino
We will not describe the events of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" - these are such famous and popular works (including thanks to the film adaptation of Jackson) that it is unlikely that there will be at least someone among science fiction fans who is not even superficially familiar with the books. ...
"The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" not only adequately completed the collection of legends conceived by Tolkien, but, undoubtedly, became the crown of the writer's creation and had a tremendous influence on the development of the genre in literature. Although for Tolkien himself, these books were only a small part of one great cycle.
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John Tolkien (Tolkien is often mistakenly written in Russian) is a man whose name will forever remain a part of world literature. This author has written only a few full-fledged literary works in his life, but each of them has become a small brick in the foundation of the whole world - the world of fantasy. John Tolkien is often referred to as the genre's ancestor, father and creator. Subsequently, these or those fairy worlds were created by many writers, but it was Tolkien's world that always appeared in such cases in the form of a kind of tracing paper, a kind of example for millions of other authors in different parts of the Earth.Tolkien reads "Namárië" + Tolkien Cartoons
Our today's story is dedicated to the life and work of one of the brightest writers of our time. To the person who created a whole world for us, in which fairy tales seem alive and real ...
Early years, childhood and Tolkien's family
John Ronald Ruel Tolkien was born in January 1892 in Bloemfontein, which today is part of the Republic of South Africa. In the very south of the Black Continent, his family ended up due to the promotion of his father, who was entrusted with the right to manage the representative office of one of the local banks. As noted in some sources, the mother of our today's hero - Mabel Tolkien - arrived in South Africa when she was seven months pregnant. Thus, the first child of the Tolkien couple was born almost immediately after the move. Subsequently, John's younger brother appeared in the family, and then a younger sister.As a child, John was a completely ordinary child. He often played with his peers and spent a lot of time outside the home. The only memorable episode from his early childhood was the case of a tarantula bite. According to medical records, John Tolkien was treated by a doctor named Thornton. According to some researchers, it was he who later became the prototype of the wise and kind wizard Gandalf - one of the main characters of Tolkien's three books at once. In addition, the same tarantula that bit the boy in early childhood received a peculiar reflection. The image of the spider was embodied in the evil spider Shelob, who attacks the heroes of Tolkien's book in one of its episodes.
In 1896, after the death of the father of the family from a lingering fever, the whole family of our today's hero moved back to England. Here mother Mabel Tolkien with her three children settled in a suburb of Birmingham, where she lived until her death. This period became very difficult in the life of the family of the future writer. There was a constant lack of money, and the only joy for Mabel Tolkien and her children was literature and religion. John learned to read early enough. However, during this period, most of his desk literature consisted of religious books. Subsequently, the tales of some English and European writers were added to them. So, Tolkien's favorite works were the books "Alice in Wonderland", "Treasure Island" and some others. It was this strange symbiosis of fairytale and religious literature that laid the foundations of the corporate identity, which he organically embodied in the future.
After the death of his mother in 1904, John was raised by his grandfather - a priest of the local Anglican Church. It was he, in the opinion of many, who instilled in the future writer a love for philology and linguistics. With his submission, Tolkien entered the King Edward School, where he began to study Old English, Gothic, Welsh, Old Norse and some other languages. This knowledge was later very useful to the writer in the development of the languages of Middle-earth.
Subsequently, for several years, John Tolkien studied at Oxford University.
Tolkien's work as a writer
After graduation, John Tolkien was drafted into the army and participated in many bloody battles as part of the Lancashire Riflemen. During the First World War, many of his friends died and subsequently the hatred of military operations remained with Tolkien until the end of his life.The story of John Ronald Ruel Tolkien
From the front, John returned disabled and subsequently earned his living exclusively teaching activities... He taught at the University of Leeds, then at Oskford University. So he earned the fame of one of the best philologists in the world, and later also the fame of a writer.
In the twenties, Tolkien began writing his first literary work, The Silmarillion, which consisted of short stories and contained a description of the fictional world of Middle-earth. However, work on this work was completed a little later. Trying to please his children, John set about writing a lighter and "more fabulous" work, which soon became known as "The Hobbit or There and Back Again."
In this book, the world of Middle-earth for the first time came to life and appeared before the readers in the form of a holistic image. The Hobbit was published in 1937 and became quite successful among the British.
Despite this fact, for a long time Tolkien did not seriously consider a professional writing career. He continued to teach, and in parallel with this he worked on the cycle of traditions "The Silmarillion" and the creation of the languages of Middle-earth.
In the period from 1945 to 1954, he wrote extremely small works - mainly stories and fairy tales. However, already in 1954, the book "The Fellowship of the Ring" was published, which became the first part of the famous series "The Lord of the Rings". It was followed by other parts - "Two Strongholds" and "The Return of the King". The books were published in Britain and later in the United States. From that moment on, a real "Tolkien boom" began around the world.
Tolkien's Confession, The Lord of the Rings
In the sixties, the popularity of the epic "The Lord of the Rings" became so great that it became one of the main trends of that time. In honor of Tolkien's heroes, tea houses, restaurants, public institutions and even botanical gardens... Some time later, many prominent figures even advocated giving Tolkien Nobel Prize in the field of literature. This prize, however, bypassed him. Although there are a lot of awards and various literary prizes in the writer's personal collection. 
In addition, already at that time, John Tolkien sold the rights to screen adaptations of his works. Subsequently, prominent figures in England and the United States have created numerous audio performances, games, cartoons and even full-length Hollywood blockbusters based on Tolkien's books. However, the author himself did not find most of all this. In 1971, after the death of his wife Edith Mary, the writer fell into a prolonged depression. Literally a year later, he had a bleeding stomach ulcer, and some time later he also had pleurisy. On September 2, 1973, Tolkien died of numerous illnesses. The great author is buried in the same grave with his wife. Many of his works (mainly short stories) published posthumously.
Tolkien John Ronald Ruel
Dates of life January 3, 1892 - September 2, 1973
Place of Birth
: Bloemfontein City
English writer, linguist, philologist
Notable works
: "The Lord of the Rings", "The Hobbit"
Objects named after Tolkien
* asteroid (2675) Tolkien;
* sea crustacean Leucothoetolkieni from the system of the Nazca and Sala-i-Gomez (Pacific Ocean) underwater ridges;
* Staphyllinidae GabriustolkieniSchillhammer, 1997 (Lives in Nepal (Khandbari, InduwaKholaValley)).
JOHN RONALD ROEL TOLKIN
1892 - 1973
JRR Tolkien was born into the family of an ordinary bank clerk, but in an extraordinary place - in Bloemfontein, a small town in southern Africa. But England became his real homeland, where his parents soon returned.
His father died when the boy (everyone called him by his middle name - Ronald) was only 4 years old. His mother had a tremendous influence on his character. She was a courageous and stubborn woman. Converting to Catholicism, she was able to and her sons, Ronald and his younger brother, educate in the spirit of faith. It was not easy: indignant relatives, adherents of the Church of England, left the family of the young widow without support.
Dreaming of giving her children a good education, she herself taught Ronald French, German, Latin, Greek ... The boy entered an excellent school, became a scholar.
But Ronald's mother dies very early, in 1904. And Ronald and his brother remain in the care of their spiritual father, the priest Francis Morgan. He encouraged Ronald in his zeal for learning ...
However, the young man could not enter Oxford the first time. This is due to the appearance in his life of Edith Brett. The engagement with the girl was concluded within a few days after his majority. The marriage turned out to be very happy: the couple raised 4 children and lived together for more than 50 years, until their death.
Already at school, Ronald's great interest in ancient languages and literature became noticeable: he studied Old English, Welsh, Old Norse, Finnish ... the youngest professors of the university. The war forces him to go to the front, but when he returns, he resumes his scientific and creative activities.
It was at this time in his imagination that the world that Tolkien will describe all his life is taking shape. The world was expanding, it had its own story and its own characters, its own language that was unlike anything appeared, and those who spoke it appeared - elves, immortals and sad ... Tolkien composed, not counting on publication.
But the publication did take place. And thanks to his fairy tale "The Hobbit, or There and Back" (1937), Tolkien entered literature.
And the story of writing a fairy tale was very unusual.
Once Tolkien put on a blank sheet of paper the phrase "There was a hobbit in a hole underground" and thought about it: "and who are the hobbits" ...? He began to find out. The hobbits turned out to be human-like, but rather short. Plump, respectable, they were usually not eager for adventure and loved to eat well. But one of them, the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, found himself involved in a story full of various adventures. It's good that with a happy ending ... One episode of the story, in which the hero found a magic ring in the caves of the disgusting creature Gollum, as it turned out, connected the tale with Tolkien's next work, the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Tolkien thought about the sequel to "The Hobbit ..." on the advice of his publisher - and took on it with his usual meticulousness and scrupulousness. The number of pages kept increasing. Only by the end of the 40s. the work was completed, and in 1954 the first volume of the epic was published. A truly "adult" novel unfolded against a fabulous background. And not just a novel, but a philosophical parable about good and evil, about the corrupting influence of power, about how sometimes a weak person is able to do what the strong are not capable of; this is an epic chronicle, and a sermon of mercy, and much more. Differs from the traditionally fabulous and the end of the novel. After all that has happened, the world cannot return to its previous state, and the main character, the hobbit Frodo, will never be as carefree as he used to be. The wounds the sinister ring has inflicted on his heart will never heal. Together with the elven ships, he leaves for the endless sea, to the West, in search of oblivion ...
Tolkien's constant striving for perfection, which forced him to redo what he had written many times in his literary works, did not allow him to publish anything more, except for a few children's fairy tales. Such as "Farmer Giles of Ham", whose hero, a cowardly peasant, defeats an equally cowardly dragon. Or the fairy tale-allegory "The Blacksmith from the Big Wootton" (1967), the tale that the magical world opens up to a person if he is wise enough to accept it, and that you need to gratefully accept the gifts of fate and part with them , if needed.
After Tolkien's death, his son, on the basis of drafts, published many more of his father's works, among them - "Letters of Santa Claus", "Mister Bliss" and others.
Tolkien became famous as a children's writer, but his work goes beyond purely children's literature.
M. S. Rachinskaya
Children about writers. Foreign writers.- M .: Strelets, 2007.- S. 48-49., Ill.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Born January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Republic - died September 2, 1973 in Bournemouth, England. English writer, linguist, poet, philologist, professor at Oxford University. He is best known as the author of the classic works of "high fantasy": "The Hobbit, or There and Back", "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion".
Tolkien served as Professor of Anglo-Saxon Language Rawlinson and Bosworth at Pembroke College, Oxford University (1925-1945), Merton's English Language and Literature at Merton College, University of Oxford (1945-1959). Together with his close friend CS Lewis, he was a member of the informal literary society "Inklings".
On March 28, 1972, he was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) from Queen Elizabeth II.
After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher produced several works based on his father's extensive body of notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. This book, along with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is a single collection of fairy tales, poems, stories, artificial languages and literary essays about a fictional world called Arda and its part of Middle-earth.
In 1951-1955, Tolkien used the word Legendarium to refer to most of this collection. Many authors wrote works in the fantasy genre before Tolkien, however, due to the great popularity and strong influence on the genre, many call Tolkien the "father" of modern fantasy literature, meaning mainly "high fantasy".
In 2008 the British newspaper The Times ranked him sixth on the list of "50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945".
In 2009, the American magazine Forbes named him the fifth among the deceased celebrities with the highest income.
Most of Tolkien's paternal ancestors were artisans. The Tolkien family comes from Lower Saxony, but since the 18th century, the writer's ancestors settled in England, “quickly turning into native Englishmen,” in the words of Tolkien himself. Tolkien derived his last name from the German word tollkühn, which means "recklessly brave."
Several families with the surname Tolkien and its variants still live in northwestern Germany, primarily in Lower Saxony and Hamburg. One German writer suggested that the surname most likely came from the name of the village of Tolkynen near Rastenburg in East Prussia(now northeastern Poland), although it is far from Lower Saxony. The name of this village, in turn, comes from the extinct Prussian language.
Tolkien's mother's parents, John and Emily Jane Suffield, lived in Birmingham, where with early XIX for centuries they owned a building in the city center called "Lamb House".
From 1812, Tolkien's great-great-grandfather William Suffield kept a bookstore and stationery there, and from 1826 Tolkien's great-grandfather, also John Suffield, traded there decorative fabrics and stockings.
John Ronald Ruel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now Free State, South Africa). His parents, Arthur Ruel Tolkien (1857-1895), governor of an English bank, and Mabel Tolkien (née Suffield) (1870-1904), arrived in South Africa shortly before the birth of his son in connection with the promotion of Arthur in the service.
As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a tarantula. The sick boy was cared for by a doctor named Thornton Quimby and is believed to have served as the inspiration for Gandalf the Gray.
In February 1896, after the death of the father of the family, the Tolkien family returned to England. Left alone with two children, Mabel asks for help from relatives. The return home was difficult: Tolkien's mother's relatives did not approve of her marriage. After the death of his father from rheumatic fever, the family settled in Sarehole, near Birmingham.
Mabel Tolkien was left alone with two small children in her arms and with a very modest income, which was just enough to live on.
In an effort to find support in life, she immersed herself in religion, converted to Catholicism (this led to a final break with Anglican relatives) and gave her children an appropriate education. As a result, Tolkien remained a deeply religious person throughout his life.
Tolkien's strong religious convictions played a significant role in the conversion of C.S. Lewis to Christianity, although, to Tolkien's dismay, Lewis chose the Anglican faith over the Catholic.
Mabel also taught her son the basics of Latin, as well as instilled a love of botany, and Tolkien loved to paint landscapes and trees from an early age. By the age of four, thanks to the efforts of his mother, baby John could already read and even wrote the first letters. He read a lot, and from the very beginning he disliked Stevenson's Treasure Island and the Grimm Pied Piper by the Brothers Grimm, but he liked Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Indian stories, George MacDonald's fantasy and The Book of Fairies by Andrew Lang. Tolkien's mother died of diabetes in 1904, at the age of 34. Before her death, she entrusted the upbringing of children to Father Francis Morgan, a priest of the Birmingham Church, a strong and extraordinary personality. It was Francis Morgan who developed an interest in philology in little Ronald, for which he was later very grateful to him.
Preschool age children spend in nature. These two years were enough for Tolkien to cover all the descriptions of forests and fields in his works.
In 1900, Tolkien entered the King Edward's School, where he learned Old English and began to study others - Welsh, Old Norse, Finnish, Gothic.
He showed early linguistic talent, after studying Old Welsh and Finnish, he began to develop "Elvish" languages. He subsequently attended St. Philip's School and Exeter College, Oxford.
In 1911, while studying at the school of King Edward (Birmingham), Tolkien with three friends - Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Smith and Christopher Wiseman - organized a semi-secret circle , referred to as CHKBO - Tea Club and Barrovian Society... This name is due to the fact that friends loved tea sold near the school in the Barrow supermarket, as well as in the school library, although this was prohibited. Even after leaving school, members of the Cheka kept in touch, for example, they met in December 1914 at Wiseman's house in London.
In the summer of 1911, Tolkien traveled to Switzerland, which he later mentions in a letter from 1968, noting that Bilbo Baggins' journey through the Misty Mountains was based on the path that Tolkien and twelve companions made from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen. In October of the same year, he began his studies at Oxford University (Exeter College).
In 1914, Tolkien enrolled in the Military Training Corps in order to delay military service and get a bachelor's degree. In 1915, Tolkien graduated with honors from university and went to serve as a lieutenant in the Lancashire Rifle Regiment. Soon John was drafted to the front and fought in the First World War.
John survived the bloody battle on the Somme, where two of his best friends from the Cheka ("tea club") were killed, after which he hated wars, fell ill with typhus and after long-term treatment was sent home with a disability. He devoted the following years to a scientific career: first he taught at the University of Leeds, in 1922 he received the position of Professor of Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature at Oxford University, where he became one of the youngest professors (at the age of 30) and soon earned a reputation as one of the best philologists in the world.
At the same time, he began writing a cycle of myths and legends of Middle-Earth, which would later become The Silmarillion. His family had four children, for them he first composed, narrated and then recorded The Hobbit, which was later published in 1937 by Sir Stanley Anuyn. The Hobbit enjoyed success, and Anuin invited Tolkien to write a sequel, but work on the trilogy took a long time and the book was finished only in 1954, when Tolkien was about to retire.
The trilogy was published and had a tremendous success, which surprised both the author and the publisher. Anuin expected to lose a lot of money, but he personally really liked the book, and he really wanted to publish the work of his friend. For the convenience of publishing, the book has been divided into three parts, so that after the publication and sale of the first part, it becomes clear whether it is worth printing the rest.
In 1914, Great Britain entered the First world war... Tolkien's relatives were shocked that he did not immediately volunteer for the British army.
Instead, Tolkien embarked on a course of study, postponing his enlistment in the military until his degree in 1915. After that, he was assigned to the Lancashire Fusilier Regiment with the rank of second lieutenant.
He completed 11 months of training with the 13th Battalion in Staffordshire at Cannock Chase. "Gentlemen are rare among the bosses and, to be honest, humans are also rare."- Tolkien was indignant in a letter to Edith.
On June 4, 1916, Tolkien, with the 11th Expeditionary Force Battalion, to which he was relocated, sailed to France. His move in military transport inspired him to write the poem The Lonely Isle ( "Lonely Island"). He later wrote: “Junior officers were in a state of shock for a long time. Parting with my wife then ... was like death. ".
Tolkien served as a signalman on the Somme, where he took part in the Battle of Thiepval Ridge and the subsequent assault on the Schwaben Redoubt.
The time of fighting for Tolkien's wife Edith was the greatest stress, she was afraid of every knock on the door, fearing that they would bring news of her husband's death. Due to the censorship adopted in the British Army mail, Tolkien developed a secret code that he used to write letters home... Thanks to this code, Edith was able to track her husband's movements on the map of the Western Front.
On October 27, 1916, Tolkien contracted trench fever, spread by lice, which lived in many dugouts.
Tolkien was freed from military service and on November 8, 1916, he was sent to England. Many of his dear school friends, including Gilson and Smith, did not return from the war.
Weak and emaciated, Tolkien spent the remainder of the war in hospitals and garrisons, considered unhealthy for mainstream service.
During his rebuilding at a farmhouse in Little Haywood, Staffordshire, Tolkien began work on "The Book of Lost Tales"(English The Book of Lost Tales), starting with "The Fall of Gondolin"(English The Fall of Gondolin).
Throughout 1917 and 1918, he experienced several exacerbations of the disease, but recovered enough to serve in various military camps, and rose to the rank of lieutenant. During this time, Edith gave birth to their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien.
When Tolkien served in Kingston upon Hull, he and Edith went for walks in the woods near the village of Roos, and Edith danced for him in a clearing between hemlock flowers.
Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was as an assistant lexicographer in 1919, when he, demobilized from the army, joined the work on the Oxford English Dictionary, where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin starting with the letter "W".
In 1920, he took up the post of reader (similar in many respects to the post of lecturer) in English at the University of Leeds, and (of those hired) became the youngest professor there.
At the time of the University, he released "Dictionary of Middle English" and published the final edition of Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight (with the philologist Eric Valentine Gordon) - a publication that included the original text and comments that are often confused with the translation of this work into modern English, created later by Tolkien, together with translations "Pearls"("Perle" - in Middle English) and "Sir Orfeo".
In 1925, Tolkien returned to Oxford, where he took up (until 1945) the position of Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College.
At the time of Pembroke College, he writes The Hobbit and the first two volumes "Lord of the rings" living at 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford, where his Blue Plaque was installed in 2002.
In 1932, he also published a philological essay on Nodens (also Nudens, the Celtic god of healing, sea, hunting and dogs), continuing Sir Mortimer Wheeler when he left for the excavation of the Roman Asclepion in Gloucestershire, Lydney Park.
In the 1920s, Tolkien took over the translation "Beowulf", which he completed in 1926 but never published. As a result, the poem was edited by Tolkien's son and published by him in 2014, more than forty years after Tolkien's death and almost 90 years since its completion.
Ten years after the translation was completed, Tolkien gave a very famous lecture on this work, entitled Beowulf: Monsters and Critics, which had a defining influence on research on "Beowulf".
At the start of World War II, Tolkien was being considered for the position of codebreaker. In January 1939, he was asked about the possibility of serving in the cryptographic department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the event of a state of emergency. He agreed and completed a training course at the London headquarters of the Government Communications Center. Be that as it may, although Tolkien was very shrewd in order to become a code breaker, in October he was informed that on this moment the government does not need his services. As a result, he never served again.
In 2009, The Daily Telegraph stated that Tolkien had, for some unknown reason, turned down an offer to be a full-time recruit with a salary of £ 500 a year.
Although Tolkien hated Adolf Hitler and Nazism, he was appalled by the Allied bombing of Germany. In 1945, Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher: “It is assumed that we have reached a stage of civilization at which, perhaps, it is still necessary to execute a criminal, but there is no need to gloat or to jerk his wife and child next to the laughter of the orc crowd. of the worst world catastrophes. Well, you and I are powerless to do anything here. This should be the measure of guilt that is justly attributed to any citizen of the country who is not a member of its government. Well, the first War of the Machines, it seems that it is approaching its final, unfinished stage - despite the fact that as a result, alas, everyone became poor, many were orphaned or crippled, and millions died, and one thing won: the Machines. ".
In 1945, Tolkien became Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford, and remained in that position until his retirement in 1959. For many years he worked as an outside examiner at University College Dublin.
In 1954, Tolkien received an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland (University College Dublin was an integral part of it).
In 1948, Tolkien completed work on the novel "Lord of the Rings"- almost a decade after the first draft. He offered the book to Allen & Unwin. According to Tolkien's plan, The Silmarillion should have been published simultaneously with The Lord of the Rings, but the publishing house did not agree to this.
Then, in 1950, Tolkien offered his work to Collins, but Milton Waldman, an employee of the publishing house, said the novel was "in dire need of a cut." In 1952, Tolkien wrote again at Allen & Unwin: "I would happily consider publishing any portion of the text." The publisher agreed to publish the novel in its entirety, without cuts.
In the early 1960s, The Lord of the Rings was released in the United States with Tolkien's permission by Ballantine Books and was an overwhelming commercial success. The novel fell on fertile soil: the youth of the 1960s, carried away by the hippie movement and the ideas of peace and freedom, saw in the book the embodiment of many of their dreams.
In the mid-1960s, The Lord of the Rings experienced a real boom. The author himself admitted that he was flattered by success, but over time he got tired of popularity. He even had to change his phone number because the fans annoyed him with calls.
In 1961, Clive S. Lewis sought to award Tolkien the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, Swedish academics rejected a nomination stating that Tolkien's books "are by no means top-class prose." Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andric received the prize that year.
Tolkien also translated the book of the prophet Jonah for publication "Jerusalem Bible" which was published in 1966.
After the death of his wife in 1971, Tolkien returned to Oxford.
At the end of 1972, he suffered greatly from indigestion, an x-ray showed dyspepsia. Doctors prescribed a diet for him and demanded to completely eliminate the use of wine.
On August 28, 1973, Tolkien went to Bournemouth, to an old friend, Denis Tolhurst. Thursday August 30th, he attended Mrs. Tolhurst's birthday party. Didn't feel very well, ate little, but drank a little champagne. At night it got worse and in the morning Tolkien was taken to a private clinic, where they found a bleeding stomach ulcer. Despite the optimistic forecasts at the beginning, pleurisy had developed by Saturday, and on the night of Sunday, September 2, 1973, John Ronald Ruel Tolkien died at the age of eighty-one.
The spouses were buried in the same grave.
Tolkien's family:
In 1908, he meets Edith Mary Brett, who has big influence on his work.
Falling in love prevented Tolkien from immediately entering college, besides, Edith was a Protestant and three years older than him. Father Francis took his word of honor from John that he would not meet with Edith until he was 21 years old - that is, until the age of majority, when Father Francis ceased to be his guardian. Tolkien fulfilled his promise by not writing a single line to Mary Edith until that age. They didn't even meet or talk.
On the evening of the same day, when Tolkien turned 21, he wrote a letter to Edith declaring his love and offering his hand and heart. Edith replied that she had already agreed to marry another person, because she decided that Tolkien had long forgotten her. In the end, she returned the wedding ring to the groom and announced that she was marrying Tolkien. In addition, at his insistence, she converted to Catholicism.
The engagement took place in Birmingham in January 1913, and the wedding took place on March 22, 1916 in the English city of Warwick, in St. Mary's Catholic Church. His union with Edith Brett was long and happy. The couple lived together for 56 years and raised three sons: John Francis Ruel (1917), Michael Hilary Ruel (1920), Christopher Ruel (1924), and daughter Priscilla Mary Ruel (1929).
Tolkien's bibliography:
1925 - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (co-authored with E.B. Gordon) 1937 - The Hobbit or There and Back Again
1945 - Leaf by Niggle
1945 - The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun
1949 - Farmer Giles of Ham
1953 - The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (play)
1954-1955 - The Lord of the Rings
1954 - The Two Towers
1955 - The Return of the King
1962 - The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (cycle of poems)
1967 - The Road Goes Ever On (with Donald Swann)
1967 - Smith of Wootton Major
1976 - The Father Christmas Letters
1977 - The Silmarillion
1980 - Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth
1983 - The Monsters And The Critics And Others Esseys
1983-1996 - "The History of Middle-earth" / The History of Middle-earth in 12 volumes
1997 - Tales from the Perilous Realm
1998 - The Roverandom
2007 - The Children of Húrin
2009 - The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun
2009 - The History of The Hobbit
2013 - The Fall of Arthur
2014 - Beowulf - A Translation And Commentary.