Biography

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on 3

January 1892. His father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, and his mother, Mabel Suffield,

were married on 16 April 1891, and from this marriage two children were born:

John and Hilary. Arthur died in Africa in 1896 and his wife and J. R. R. R.

Tolkien´s mother also died in 1904 from diabetes. From an early age, Tolkien

was interested in folklore and mythology, even creating his own languages,

which he used with his brother and which would later be used in the

development of his work. He met his future wife, Edith Mary Bratt, at the age of

16 at school, but his legal guardian at the time, Xavier Morgan, a priest of Cádiz

origin, forbade Tolkien to be in contact with her until he was 21, as he thought it

would distract him from his studies. He eventually married her on 22 March

1916. The First World War, in which he took part, is said to have influenced the

Lord of the Children books, and Tolkien came out of this war with a pacifist

vision. He had four children with his wife: John, Michael, Christopher and

Priscilla. Without any doubt his best known work is The Lord of the Rings. In

these books he compiled a large part of the European mythologies and

created new legends adapted to the Anglo-Saxon culture. In addition to his

work as a writer, Tolkien taught English literature and philology at the Oxford

University for 35 years from 1925 to 1959, when he retired. He was widowed on

29 November 1971 and died 21 months later of pneumonia on 28 March 1972.