TolkienJ.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) gained a reputation during the 1960s and 1970s as a cult figure among youths disillusioned with war and the technological age. His continuing popularity evidences his ability to evoke the oppressive realities of modern life while drawing audiences into a fantasy world.John Ronald Reuel was born on the third of January, 1892, at Bloemfontein, South Africa, where his father, Arthur, had taken a position with the Bank of Africa. In 1895 Tolkiens mother, Mabel Suffield, moved back to England with her children, because Tolkiens health was affected by the climate. Arthur Tolkien hoped to return to England soon, but he contracted rheumatic fever the following autumn and died early in 1896. After a few months of living with her parents, Mabel Tolkien rented a cottage on the edge of Birmingham, and from then until her death in 1904, she and here two sons lived in rented houses on the edges of the city. After her death, Mabel Tolkiens parish priest, Father Francis Morgan, took responsibility for the upbringing and education of her sons.Tolkiens only means of escape from a lower-middle-class commercial life was winning an academic scholarship, which, with some difficulty, he did in 1910, gaining entrance to Exeter College, Oxford. In 1908 Tolkien fell in love with Edith Bratt, an orphan like himself. In 1910 Father Morgan forbade him to communicate with her until he was of age, to which Tolkien obeyed. At Oxford he began studying classics but soon concentrated on English language and literature, being awarded first-class honors in his final examination in 1915. He revisited Edith Bratt five days after his twenty-first birthday, and they were formally betrothed in 1914 when, at Tolkiens insistence, she converted to Roman Catholicism(Kroeber 519).Tolkien went into combat for a short while on the Western Front. After returning to Britain in 1917, he began writing The book of Lost Tales which ultimately became The ...
