Calacirya | Biography

 		"One of my strongest opinions is that investigation of an author's
biography (or such other glimpses of his 'personality' as can be gleaned
by the curious) is an entirely vain and false approach to his works."*

J.R.R. Tolkien - a Biography

Timeline

1889 21 January: Edith Bratt is born in Gloucester.
1891 16 April: Arthur Reuel Tolkien (a bank manager) and Mabel Suffield were married in Cape Town Cathedral.
1892 3 January: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is born in Bloemfontein, The capital of the Orange Free State, South Africa.
1894 17 February: Hilary, JRR Tolkien's younger brother is born.
1895 April: Mabel took her two sons back to England for health reasons. Arthur Tolkien however remains in South Africa.
1896 15 February: Arthur Tolkien dies of a severe haemorrhage, after being ill for some months.
Summer: The family rent a cottage in the country (Sarehole Mill, near Birmingham). They stayed there four years, 'Four years' wrote JRR Tolkien looking back,' but the longest-seeming and most formative part of my life.'.
1900
 		Spring: Mabel Tolkien is received into the Catholic church to the outrage of her Unitarian Father.
September: JRR Tolkien enters King Edwards School after retaking the entrance exam he failed the previous year forcing the family to move from Sarehole Mill to Moseley a suburb of Birmingham.
1901 The family move to a small villa in Kings Heath, which backs onto a railway line.
1902 Mabel and her sons move to Edgbaston, partly to be near the Birmingham Oratory, and Ronald and Hilary join St Phillip's Grammar School, to save money and to ensure a Catholic education.
1903 Mabel removes her sons from St Phillip's, and teaches them herself once again. Later in the year Ronald wins a scholarship to rejoin King Edward's.
1904 Mabel Tolkien is found to have diabetes and spends some weeks in hospital. In the summer she and the boys stay at Rednal, in Worstershire.
14 November: After sinking into a diabetic coma Mabel Tolkien dies. JRR Tolkien's and his brother's guardianship is taken up by Father Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. The boys move into their Aunt Beatrice's house in Duchess Road.
1908 The boys move into a room let by Mrs Faulkner and meets Edith Bratt.
1909 Autumn: Ronald's romance with Edith is discovered by Father Francis Morgan. Tolkien fails to obtain a scholarship at Oxford.
1910 January: Ronald and Hilary move to new lodgings, but Ronald continues to see Edith and so is forbidden even to communicate with her.
March: Edith leaves Birmingham for Cheltenham.
17 December: Tolkien is awarded an Open Classical Exhibition to Exeter College, Oxford.
1911 The 'T.C.B.S.' is formed.
Summer: Ronald leaves school and visits Switzwerland.
Autumn: Tolkien begins his first term at Oxford.
1913 January: Ronald is twenty-one and so is reunited with Edith.
February: Tolkien takes the Honour Moderations and is awarded a Second Class.
Summer: He begins reading for the honours School of English and English literature.
1914 January: Edith is received into the Catholic Church.
1915 Summer: He gains First Class Honours in English and English literature. Is commissioned by the Lancashire Fusiliers and begins training.
1916 22 March: Ronald and Edith are married.
June: Tolkien leaves for France as a second Lieutenant in the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, and serves as the Signalling Officer.
November: Returns to England suffering 'Trench fever' (An acute infectious relapsing fever caused by a micro organism, transmitted by a louse).
1917 January and February: Tolkien starts writing the 'Book of Lost Tales' which develops to become The Silmarillion.
Spring: He is posted to Yorkshire but spends much of his time in hospital.
16 November: JRR Tolkien's first son, John, is born. Later in the month the family move to Oxford.
1918 Starts working for the Oxford English Dictionary, which he continues doing for two years.
1919 Works as a freelance Tutor.
1920 October: Tolkien is appointed reader in English Language at Leeds University. Shortly after his second son, Michael, is born.
1922 EV Gordon joins the staff at Leeds and together they work on a edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
1924 Tolkien becomes Professor of English Language at Leeds University.
November: His third son, Christopher, is born.
1925 Summer: Tolkien is elected Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. So in the autumn the family move to Oxford.
1926 Tolkien meets CS Lewis and enters a lifelong friendship.
1929 His only daughter, Priscilla, is born.
1930 About this time the Hobbit is started, but then abandoned.
1936 The lecture Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics is delivered. Susan Dagnall of Allen and Unwin reads the manuscript of The Hobbit and suggests Tolkien finishes it.
1937 Autumn: The Hobbit is published and the sequel which becomes The Lord of the Rings is begun.
1939 Tolkien gives his famous lecture On Fairy-Stories at St Andrews University. At he outbreak of war Charles Williams joins the Inklings.
1945 Tolkien is elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. He holds the post until he retires in 1959.
1949 The Lord of the Rings is completed and Farmer Giles of Ham is published.
1950 The Lord of the Rings is offered to Collins in the hope they will also publish the Silmarillion.
1952 The Lord of the Rings is returned by Collins and passed to Allen and Unwin.
1954 The first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, are published.
1955 The third volume of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, is published.
1959 Tolkien retires from his professorship.
1965 Ace books publish an unauthorised, US edition of The Lord of the Rings. A 'campus cult' begins.
1968 The Tolkien's move to Poole, Bournemouth.
1971 29 November: Edith Tolkien dies in hospital, aged eighty-two.
1972 Tolkien moves to Merton Street, Oxford into rooms provided by the University.
Spring: receives the CBE from the Queen
June: Receives a honorary Doctorate of letters from Oxford for his contribution to philology
1973 28 August: He goes to Bournemouth to visit friends.
2 September: After being taken ill he dies in the early hours aged eight-one.
1977 The Silmarillion is published posthumously after being edited by Christopher Tolkien.

The Family Tree

   TOLKIEHNS (TOLLKÜHN) OF SAXONY                       SUFFIELDS OF EVESHAM
                 |                                               |
        Tolkiehns of London                                John Suffield
         (later 'Tolkien')                              (Birmingham draper)
                 |                                           1802-1891
       John Benjamin Tolkien                                     |
             1807-1896                                     John Suffield
(piano manufacturer and music-seller,                        1833-1930
      trading in Birmingham)             (Birmingham draper, afterwards commercial traveller)
         =Mary Jane Stow                                   =Emily Sparrow
    +------------|-------+                                       |
    |                    |             +-------------+-----------+------------+----------------+
    |               3 daughters     2 sons   Edith Mary ("May")  | Emily Jane ('Aunt Jane') William
    |               and 4 sons                   1865-1936       |        1872-1963        1874-1904   
    |                                        = Walter Incledon   |      = Edwin Neave      (Cashier)
    |                                                |           |        1872-1909   = Beatrice Bartlett
    +-----------------------+              +---------+           |    (insurance agent)  ('Auntie Bea')
                            |           Marjorie   Mary          |
                            |          1891-1973 1875-1940       |
                            |                                    |
                            |                   +----------------+
                            |          1891     |
                   Arthur Reuel Tolkien = Mabel Suffield
                        1857-1896       |   1870-1904
                      (bank manager)    |
                     +------------------+----------------+
         John Ronald Reuel Tolkien         Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien
                 1892-1971                           1894-1976
               = Edith Bratt                    = Magdalen Mathews
                 1889-1971                               |
                     |                                   |
   +----------+----------+----------+                  3 sons
 John      Michael  Christopher Priscilla
b.1917    1920-1984   b.1924     b.1929

Photos

[The Family] [Ronald and Hillary] [JRRT aged 19]
The Family, Bloemfontein, November 1892. Ronald and Hillary in May 1905Tolkien, 1911, aged nineteen

[JRRT, 1916] [JRRT sat in a chair] [JRRT with a pipe]
Ronald in 1916

[JRRT-colour] [JRRT-colour with a pipe] [3 pictures of JRRT]
In the study at Merton Street, 1972

[The last photo of JRRT] [Tolkien's grave]
The last ever photo of JRR Tolkien, taken next to one of his favorite trees (Pinus Nigra) in the Botanic Garden, Oxford, 9 Aug 1973 (Photo: M.G.R. Tolkien) JRR and Edith Tolkien's grave.
Edith Mary Tolkien, Luithien, 1889-1971.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973.

If you want to see photos of the places where Tolkien lived and worked I strongly suggest you visit, Tolkien's Oxford.

Bibliography

JRR Tolkien, A Biography: Humphrey Carpenter


*Letters of JRR Tolkien, No. 329

Home | Links | Quotes | Biography | Essential books | Maps | Genealogies | Essays | Riddles | About the site | Guestbook | Poll | Feedback | Email me