J.R.R. Tolkien: Father of Modern Fantasy
By: Crystal Sullivan Known as âthe father of modern fantasyâ
his epic tales of legend and lore have been enjoyed by millions of people all over the
world â devoured in popular books and adapted for Hollywood blockbuster films. Unbelievably bright, he was a distinguished
university professor, poet, historian, and expert linguist. As a child, he even made up his own languages
for pure fun. He gave us complex and fanciful creatures
including hobbits, orcs, and elves set in an prehistoric Middle-earth. Some theorize his made up worlds are symbolic
of his countryâs past power struggles, influenced by his devout Roman Catholic faith, or simply
the genesis of his personal experiences. In any case, there is no denying his glorious
imagination and his rightful place among the greatest writers of all time. But who was the creator of The Hobbit and
the Lord of the Rings? Today on Biographics we explore the life of
J.R.R. Tolkien. Formative Years
Before bank clerk Arthur Tolkien and Mabel Suffield welcomed their son into the world,
the English couple moved to South Africa. Here, Arthur had high hopes of advancing his
career and providing a comfortable life for their budding family. John Ronald Reuel (known as âRonaldâ to
most) was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa on January 3, 1892. Not long after, another son Hilary was born,
completing the Tolkien family. Tolkienâs childhood in Africa was cut short
when his mother decided the boys would be better educated in their native England. At the age of three, Tolkien and his mother
and younger brother left for their homeland while Arthur stayed behind to settle the business. He was planning to join them but never made
it -- falling ill and dying of a severe brain hemorrhage (a complication of rheumatic fever)
on February 15, 1896. At the time, the spread of disease and contagions
were feared and travel took many weeks, if not months. Arthurâs body was laid to rest without family
by his side. Having spent just a small fraction of his
early years in Africa, Tolkien had few memories from the time. However, one tale persists yet the facts remain
uncertain. According to the story, the then-toddler Tolkien
stumbled upon and was bit by a baboon spider (a kind of tarantula) in the garden. Tolkien ran screaming and his nurse immediately
snatched him up and sucked the venom out from the wound. Tolkien later said, â...he could remember
a hot day and running in fear through long, dead grass, but the memory of the tarantula
itself faded, and he said that the incident left him with no especial dislike of spiders.â Still, fans and armchair psychologists alike
speculate whether the tarantula influenced the presence of man-eating spiders in Tolkienâs
later fictional works. Back in England, Mabel and the boys settled
with family in the West Midlands â first in Kings Heath and then in Sarehole. On one hand, and especially in the city of
Birmingham, the West Midlands was urban, dark, and industrial. On the other hand, it was the idyllic English
countryside with lush with green grass, trees, and a corn mill
in the rural hamlet of Sarehole. Between the ages of four and eight, Tolkien
lived across the street and within 300 yards of the Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog. He spent many hours playing there with his
younger brother â and being chased by the millerâs son, whom the boys nicknamed the
âWhite Ogre.â The Shire, Tolkienâs imaginary land of Hobbits,
was inspired by Sarehole. In The Hobbit, he writes of Bilbo Baggins
"running as fast as his furry feet could carry him down the lane, past the great Mill, across
The Water and then on for a mile or more." Tolkienâs mother homeschooled the boys at
first, teaching the young Tolkien botany and the basics of Latin. Tolkien could read fluently by the age of
four and write soon after. He loved drawing landscapes and trees but
his favorite studies were those involving languages. Later, he would attend King Edwardâs School
in Birmingham which proved to be the perfect breeding ground for the boyâs natural curiosity
and development of linguistics. Tolkien was an exceptional student who was
capable of easily mastering ancient and modern languages including Greek, Latin, Spanish,
Old English, Old Norse, Gothic and Finnish. The boy made up his own languages, including
early variations of Elvish ones featured in his writings. At King Edwards, he made a number of close
friends and formed a semi-secret society that enjoyed drinking tea and critiquing each otherâs
literary works. They called themselves T.C.B.S. (which stood
for the Tea Club and Barrovian Society). Despite the earlier loss of his father, life
for the young Tolkien was generally happy until two events altered the course of his
life. In 1900, his mother decided to convert to
the Catholic faith. This bold move left Mabel and her sons estranged
from both sides of the family and in the fallout, Tolkien experienced isolation, loneliness,
and poverty. Following his acceptance into the Catholic
church, Tolkien remained devout in his faith for the rest of his life. And, he has been credited with being partly
responsible for bringing another famous writer and friend, C.S. Lewis, back to Christianity. Tragedy struck Tolkien again in 1904 when
his mother was diagnosed with diabetes â a sure death sentence for most before insulin
was available. Sadly, Mabel died in the same year, on November
14. Tolkien was 12 at the time. Fortunately for Tolkien and his brother Hilary,
their Catholic priest Father Francis Morgan stepped in and became their guardian and made
sure the boys received everything they needed â both materially and spiritually. LĂșthien and Beren Tolkien met his eventual bride Edith Bratt
when he was 16, and she was 19. They were both orphans and lodgers at a boarding
house run by a woman named Mrs. Faulkner. The two grew fond of each other and a friendship
developed. And then, as it happens with teenagers, the
pair became too close for Father Francisâ liking. He was horrified his ward was courting a Protestant
woman and believed the relationship was a distraction from Tolkienâs school work. Father Francis forbade Tolkien to see or correspond
with Edith until he was 21. This was a devastating blow to Tolkien but
he obeyed the order. When his birthday approached, he wrote to
his love and proposed marriage. Her reply was heartbreaking but offered a
glimmer of hope, she was engaged to another man but his letter made her reconsider. Edith agreed to meet Tolkien on January 8,
1913 at the train station in Cheltenham. They walked and talked for hours and Edith
accepted Tolkienâs marriage proposal â breaking off her prior engagement. Edith converted to Catholicism and the couple
married on March 22, 1916. Tolkien was 24 years old, and a few months
shy of deploying to the Western Front. In a letter to his son Michael years later,
âTolkien expressed admiration for his wife's willingness to marry a man with no job, little
money, and no prospects except the likelihood of being killed in the Great War.â Tolkien was a true romantic and Edith was
his muse. He wrote of her, â...her hair was raven,
her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing â and
dance.â Tolkien was so mad for Edith he created the
fictional pair of star-crossed lovers based on their romance: LĂșthien, daughter of the
Elven King of Doriath, and Beren, a mortal man. They fall for each other when Beren discovers
LĂșthien singing and dancing in a glade. Yet, their love can never be since Beren is
destined to die. Alas, her disapproving father the King sends
Beren on a task he knows the man cannot complete. The full story of LĂșthien and Beren was left
unfinished during Tolkienâs lifetime but served as an important backstory in The Hobbit. Tolkienâs son Christopher later published
LĂșthien and Beren as a chapter of the saga, The Silmarillion. Edith and Tolkien enjoyed a long and happy
marriage to each other and they had four children: John Francis, Michael Hilary, Christopher
John, and Priscilla Mary Anne. Tolkien was a devoted father and loved his
children, often making up fanciful stories for them. From 1920 to 1942 at Christmas time, Tolkien
illustrated letters to his children...introducing new characters such as the North Polar Bear,
Snow Man and others, each year. Three years after his death, these intimate
stories were published as Letters from Father Christmas by the Tolkien estate. The Great War
Believing he was in his own words, "a young man with too much imagination and little physical
courage," Tolkien did not rush to join the British military when war broke out. Instead, he returned to Oxford where he had
achieved a first-class degree in June of 1915. Tolkien was busy working on poems and his
invented languages at the time. Eventually though, Tolkien enlisted as a second
lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and was sent to active duty on the Western Front
just in time for the Battle of the Somme (also known as the Somme Offensive). The Battle of the Somme remains one of the
bloodiest military battles in history. It lasted four long months and on the first
day alone, British troops suffered over 57,000 casualties. In total, over a million men lost their lives
including 420,000 British soldiers. Fighting in the Great War, Tolkien witnesses
the horrors of trench fighting and lived in deplorable, unsanitary conditions. It was hell on earth for Tolkien and his comrades
who stood by as their friends suffered and died alongside them. They spent their days and nights with little
relief and endured infestations of lice that feasted on their flesh. As a result, Tolkien came down with âtrench
fever,â a major medical problem of World War I. So severe was the lice, a chaplain staying
with Tolkienâs unit later recalled: â... We dossed down for the night in the
hopes of getting some sleep, but it was not to be. We no sooner lay down than hordes of lice
got up. So we went round to the Medical Officer, who
was also in the dugout with his equipment, and he gave us some ointment which he assured
us would keep the little brutes away. We anointed ourselves all over with the stuff
and again lay down in great hopes, but it was not to be, because instead of discouraging
them it seemed to act like a kind of hors d'oeuvre and the little beggars went at their
feast with renewed vigour. Sick and unable to fight, Tolkien left the
battlefront to recover in a Birmingham hospital in November of 1916. Through 1917 and 1918 Tolkien had recurring
bouts of the illness and he spent the time in remission doing service at home and at
various camps. Tolkien most likely escaped death on the battlefront
precisely because he became ill. Sadly, all but one of his close friends, including
those from the T.C.B.S., perished in the war. As a writer, this tragedy of loss and first-hand
experience in battle provided Tolkien with a keen sense of awareness. From the unpublished, The Book of Lost Tales,
Tolkien writes, â⊠in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents,
even some down in dugouts under shell fire.â In The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies
is thought to draw upon Tolkienâs wartime experiences, as well as the Dead Marshes and
Black Gate of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. On November 11, 1918, the Armistice was signed
marking the end of World War I. The Professor Tolkien was appointed Assistant Lexicographer
on the New English Dictionary (the âOxford English Dictionaryâ) in 1918 but stayed
on the job for only a short while. In the summer of 1920, he accepted a post
as a Reader with the University of Leeds. At Leeds, he taught and collaborated with
other authors, continued writing The Book of Lost Tales, constructed languages, and
founded reading and social clubs like the âViking Club,â where undergraduates had
an affinity for Old Norse sagas and drinking beer. In 1925, Tolkien finally received his professorship
at Oxford, the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon. Tolkien was right at home in academia and
fit in remarkably well with the predominantly male culture. He reveled in the lectures, research, and
exchange of ideas with students and fellow professors. Tolkien did not publish many scholarly articles
yet he was extremely influential. One lecture worth mentioning altered the modern
study of the Old English epic tale Beowulf and was first delivered in 1936. In âBeowulf, the Monsters and the Critics,â
Tolkien argued the monsters: Grendel, Grendelâs mother, and the Dragon, are not merely extraneous
to the narrative but should be a focus of study. Tolkien believed critics put too much emphasis
on the historical elements of the tale instead of looking at it as a work of art. At Oxford, Tolkien befriended colleague C.S.
Lewis, best known for his fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. The two men bonded over their shared love
of mythology and began meeting regularly for a glass, a joke, and to criticize each otherâs
poetry. The meetings were so enjoyable and useful,
they invited others to join. The informal group, known as âThe Inklingsâ
eventually grew to 19 members and they met once a week, late at night, sometimes not
wrapping up until two or three oâclock in the morning. As was the practice, Tolkien shared manuscripts
of works-in-progress with The Inklings and received energetic feedback from the group. Among other writings, Tolkien brought original
poetry, sections from The Hobbit, excerpts from âThe Notion Club Papers,â and each
new chapter of The Lord of the Rings. There is little evidence to support the suggestion
by some that the men had a more spiritual purpose to their meetings, or an âinklingâ
of the Divine Nature. The Inklings continued to meet regularly for
19 years. Together with Tolkien and Lewis, some of the
more distinguished members of The Inklings included Neville Coghill, Hugo Dyson, Owen
Barfield, and Charles Williams. In 1945 Tolkien changed his chair at Oxford
to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he held until his retirement
in 1959. The Storyteller One hot summer day in 1928, Professor Tolkien
was grading exam papers, which he described as âsoul-destroying.â He came upon a blank page â and without
thought âwrote down, âIn a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.â But, What was a hobbit? And, Why did it live in the ground? Tolkien needed to find the answers to these
questions. He said later, âNames always generate a
story in my mind. I thought Iâd better find out what hobbits
were like.â Then, in true Tolkien fashion, he dove headlong
into the creative process and concocted a tale to tell his younger children, and share
amongst The Inklings. In 1936, an incomplete copy of The Hobbit
wound up in Susan Dagnallâs hands, an employee of the publishing firm of George Allen and
Unwin. Recognizing the storyâs potential, Dagnall
convinced Tolkien to finish it and when complete, she presented it to her boss. He then tested it out on his 10-year old son
who gave it a raving review. The Hobbit was published one year later in
1937, and was an immediate hit. In fact, it was so successful, the publisher
asked Tolkien if he had any similar stories. Today, since the first publication, The Hobbit
has sold over 100 million copies around the world and has been translated in over 50 languages. What makes The Hobbit so enduring? For one thing, it lacks female characters
and it is not, nor ever has been, politically correct. It is also a very long tale with poetry, and
unlike other childrenâs fiction, does not have a central child figure for whom young
readers can easily identify with. Although, the protagonist Bilbo Baggins is
âonly a little hobbit,â so he kind of acts like a surrogate child. Tolkienâs colorful descriptions of Middle-earth
and its complex characters (goblins, elves, orcs, wizards, dragons, and hobbits of course)
are richly portrayed. And for all the fantasy writers who came after
Tolkien, hardly any can say their worlds were not, at least in part, influenced by The Hobbit. But, what set the story apart is the depth
of emotion and moral courage Tolkien weaves into his heroic fiction. There are examples of this throughout The
Hobbit including the death of dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield, and Bilboâs internal
struggles to do what is right â betraying his friends while they try to reclaim the
Lonely Mountain from Smaug the dragon. Bilbo feels an obsessive greed has overtaken
Thorin and when Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, the greatest treasure of all, he decides to
first hide it and then give it to his friendsâ besiegers to be used as a bargaining chip. In the end Bilbo exposes himself and confesses
because after all, they are friends. After Tolkienâs publication of The Hobbit,
he presented portions of The Silmarillion, including incomplete stories of LĂșthien and
Beren, to Stanley Unwin hoping for a warm reception but his reader felt the stories
were not commercially publishable. They contained too much poetry. Tolkien was disappointed at the news but soon
found himself busy writing the sequel to The Hobbit. Tolkienâs opus, what would become The Lord
of the Rings, was first published in three parts: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two
Towers, and The Return of the King between 1954 and 1955. And, it took him over a decade to write it. Unwinâs son, who was by now an adult, was
heavily involved in pushing a tempermental Tolkien along to finish it. Thinking it would be a relative unimpressive
release, and a loss to the firm, the publishers grossly underestimated The Lord of the Rings
public appeal. True, it had mixed reviews â from damning
to glowing and everything in between. BBC adapted it into 12 condensed episodes,
elevating its popularity further. Then, in the mid-1960s a pirated paperback
version was released which caught the attention of American readers. A sort of cult developed based on the newfound
popularity of fantasy literature and Tolkien was made a rich man. He was not entirely happy though, even if
he was flattered. Partly, because rumors circulated of party-going
cult readers ingesting LSD and reading The Lords of the Rings. And some overzealous fans, who Tolkien referred
to as lunatics, were calling his home demanding to know if Frodo had succeeded in his quest. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings certainly
receive all the glory but Tolkien authored a number of other articles and essays during
his lifetime including: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays; one Middle-earth
related work, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; editions and translations of Middle English
works such as the Ancrene Wisse, Sir Gawain, Sir Orfeo and The Pearl, and stories the Imram,
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelmâs Son, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, Farmer
Giles of Ham, Leaf by Niggle, and Smith of Wootton Major. Following his death, The Letters from Father
Christmas were released by the Tolkien estate, and later, son Christopher saw to it that
his fatherâs Silmarillion and a number of other incomplete writings under the title
of Unfinished Tales of NĂșmenor and Middle-earth were published. After his retirement from Oxford Tolkien moved
to Bournemouth and on November 29, 1971 the love of his life, Edith died. Nearly two years later on September 2, 1973
Tolkien followed. As a final testament to their love, and at
Tolkienâs instruction, they were buried in a single grave. On their tombstone, "Beren" is engraved under
his name and "Luthien" appears under Edithâs. Accomplishments & Legacy Tolkien shall remain a celebrated literary
figure through the ages as his life work continues to inspire the fantasy genre. Around the world, his characters and places
have become the namesake of various street names, companies, mountains, plants, and objects. There are even asteroids named after Bilbo
Baggins and Tolkien himself. In England, there are seven blue plaques that
commemorate places associated with Tolkien. Tolkien was made a Commander of the Order
of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1972. And, he holds a number of other achievements
and awards including: an honorary degree from The National University of Ireland and University
of Liege in 1954, and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel for The Silmarillion in
1978. In the 2000s, Tolkien ranked on BBCâs âgreatest
Britonsâ list and The Lord of the Rings was the UKâs âbest loved novelâ (2003)
and ranked among âThe 100 Greatest British Novelsâ (2015). Tolkien was placed sixth on the list of âThe
50 greatest British writers since 1945â published by âThe Timesâ in 2008. In 2009, he was listed as the fifth top-earning
âdead celebrityâ by Forbes. From 2001 to 2003, New Line Cinema released
The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy directed by Peter Jackson. The series was extremely successful and won
numerous Oscars. From 2012 to 2014, Warner Bros. and New Line
Cinema released The Hobbit, a series of three films based on The Hobbit. The first in 2012, The Hobbit: An Unexpected
Journey, the second in 2013, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and the final instalment
in 2014, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Most recently, Amazon retained the rights
to adapt The Lord of the Rings for its Prime streaming service. The multi-season adaptation, will focus on
âpreviously unexplored stories based on J.R.R. Tolkienâs original writings,â according
to a representative for the Tolkien Estate. Tolkienâs Middle-earth is surely the gift
that keeps on giving. And It is quite amazing, considering he wrote
it all in his spare time.
r/creator
For mobile and non-RES users | More info | -1 to Remove | Ignore Sub