Known for his great literary works, which created a modern fantasy, Tolkien’s own life could play out in one of his stories. In fact, one of his best-known poems was inspired by his relationship with the woman who was to be his wife.
His life was marked by an orphaned childhood, by war, by love, by his deep religious beliefs and enormous linguistic genius.
- We know from his letters that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was not inspired.
- As it is said there.
- In historical and political events that he lived near or that directly affected him.
However, the work is the daughter of the author and her life, not without misfortune, marked the melancholy of the world she created, her sense of love, faith and love of nature mark the attitudes of her protagonist characters.
Tolkien was born in 1892 in the Free State of Orange, now South Africa, the son of a British banker, returned to Britain with his mother in his childhood, in search of better weather, but his father died in Africa.
From that moment until he was 12 years old, he lived with his mother Mabel and his brother, without the financial support of the rest of the family, because Mabel had converted to Catholicism. At that time, the church of Rome was frowned upon in England and it was a shame that families had members who were part of it.
This would explain why, in 1904, after his death, Mabel left the Tolkien brothers in the care of a Catholic priest, his name being Francis Xavier Morgan, of Spanish-British descent, and marked the youth of the children.
The priest financed his studies and housed them in different rented apartments. The care and affection they received aroused deep respect for John Ronald.
At one of these hostels, at the age of 16, John Ronald met Edith Bratt, also an orphan three years older than him, it was not long before he swore eternal love, but Father Francis did not find it convenient, because the girl could distract the young man and prevent him from obtaining a scholarship. Besides, she wasn’t Catholic.
You can tell, through his letters, the pain Tolkien feels in this situation, but he obeys his guardian. The three-year-old age difference still separated the 21-year-old, the age of majority at the time.
After a failed attempt, at the age of 18 he was awarded a scholarship to Oxford, while Edith was going to work in Birmingham, where he met three great friends with which he formed the TCBS club, where they shared their love of literature and languages
Inspired by his mother, he began to create languages from a young age, with Germanic languages among his inspirations. Friends had the idea of creating a mythology for England, in the style of Greek and Roman mythologies, and Tolkien’s languages would be part of this universe.
Two facts marked his change. On the one hand, on her 21st birthday, she wrote a letter to Edith asking her to resume love between them, but she became engaged at the time. Determined not to give up, Tolkien decided to go to Birmingham to convince her and managed to do so. your goal.
In 1916, after convincing her to become Catholic, the two married, two years earlier a conflict had either earlier that shook their world, that same year she went to fight in World War I, where she lost two of her great friends. and got sick. He’s transformed back.
“Even the wisest do not know the end of all roads. J. R. R. Tolkien?
His efforts as a student paid off and Tolkien took a place as an English teacher.
Influenced by the horrors he lived and his lost friends, he continues his work by creating a magical universe he shares with some of his colleagues, such as CS Lewis, with whom he trains the Inklings.
Many of his ideas arose from stories he told his children or family games.
Because of his enormous perfectionism, which he applied to both work and literature, he rewrote more than he published. The first work on Middle-earth to reach the general public was “The Hobbit,” and for the rest of his life he published only “The Lord of the Rings. “All the other texts in this universe reached the public thanks to his son, Christopher.
All these avatars would be decisive in many of his creations
No doubt, when we read about Middle-earth, we read a little bit about it.