Tolkien

Gere Book Talk March 18 2013

Kristen A.

Born 1892 in South Africa

His parents were English His father was manager of a bank The city was rather like a town in the Old

West, it was still developing His mother Mabel, didn’t like Africa J.R.R. had a brother two years younger than

him – named Hilary They were close brothers Played outside often

Early Life

April 1895, Mabel took the boys to England for a

visit. November 1895, she learned that Arthur had

come down with rheumatic fever. Early 1896, Mabel was preparing to return when

she received a telegram that he had passed away They stayed in England, near Birmingham

They lived in the English countryside with meadows, a stream, a mill and trees, later serving for the model of The Shire

Move to England

His mother taught him to read, and later

penmanship, Latin, French, and botany An uncle paid for Ronald’s tuition at King

Edward’s after passing the entrance exam in 1900 The school was in town and they lived out of

town His mother could not afford the daily train fare

so they moved closer

Early Schooling

In 1902 Tolkien and his brother switched

schools and attended the Grammar School of St. Philip, which was attached to a church and a community of priests who cared for it

It was Roman Catholic They moved again – just next door to the school It was here they meet Father Francis

Community member and the parish priest who became good friends with Mabel and her family

Tolkien thought of him as a second father

Father Francis Morgan

Even though St. Philips school was closer and

cheaper, it could not provide the same level of education he was getting at King Edwards

His mother tutored him and he received a scholarship to return to King Edwards in the fall of 1903

Return to King Edwards

April 1904, Mabel was hospitalized with diabetes She recovered in June enough to return home Father Francis Morgan arranged for her to have

two rooms in the cottage of the postman and his wife, who cooked for them

They were happy to be back in the country side The boys returned to school in the fall In November, Mabel passed away after going into

a diabetic coma Ronald was 12

Mabel passes away

Father Francis didn’t want to let the boys live

with their predominately Protestant family There was one of Mabel’s aunts who was

indifferent to religion and lived close to their school, so he arranged for the boys to live with her

New Arrangements

He was very intellectual and meet similar boys at

King Edward’s A group of them begun having tea in the library They called themselves the T.C.B.S. The Tea Club

and Barrovian Society Their friendships were deep and they shared hopes

ideals, projects, and encouraged each other’s work There were four key members

Tolkien – languages Christopher Wiseman – maths, music, composing R.Q. Gilson - drawing and design Geoffrey Bache Smith – English Literature and Poetry

T.C.B.S at King Edward’s

1908 Father Francis learns that the boys do not like it at their

aunt’s house so he finds them lodging with a woman living behind the school

This woman had another border, Edith, who was also an orphan, three years older than Tolkien

At school Edith had shown talent as a pianist, but because she had an inheritance enough to keep her, no one thought it important or necessary to cultivate her piano skills

They fell in love over the summer of 1909, he was 17, she 20 They went out in secret but gossip got round to Father Francis

who told Tolkien he was not to see her anymore and made new living arrangements

The couple meet up again , and again Father Francis found out and this time forbade Tolkien to even write to her, until he was 21, if he did it again he would withdraw his support

He didn’t give up on her

Edith

The summer between leaving King Edward’s

and starting at Oxford, Tolkien traveled to Switzerland with a group of a dozen people, including his brother Hilary had left school at this point and had

decided to go into agriculture, and later become a fruit farmer

At the end of the trip, he purchased several postcards, one of which had an old man on it This postcard he later wrote was the ‘Origin of

Gandalf’

Trip to Switzerland

He passed the entrance and scholarship exam to

Oxford, Father Francis helped him out with additional funding

Started in the fall of 1911 He was intellectually lively, but also took part in

sports including rugby, and played pranks There was a class division at Oxford

Tolkien was from working class, most other students were of upper class, there was however a group of ‘poor scholars’ like Tolkien that were predominate in his college of Exeter

Also at Exeter there was a group of Roman Catholics

Student at Oxford

Classics was his major originally but he changed to

English English was split into Language and Literature

He chose Language Languages Handwriting Alphabets Mythology

He wanted to make a mythology for English, because there were so many tales and sagas written in ancient languages he felt like English needed one

Interests

On his 21st birthday (1913) he wrote to Edith

asking her to marry him She wrote back that she was already engaged,

but not for love They met up and Tolkien won her back They agreed to keep things a secret and not

marry until he completed his schooling He told Father Francis who did not oppose Edith was a member of the Church of England,

not Roman Catholic, as Tolkien was To be married she had to become one, which she

did, not because she wanted to, but for Tolkien

Reunion with Edith

During his studies he read Anglo-Sacon

literature, one of the poems he read was called the Crist which includes the terms Earendel and middle-earth

He said “I felt a curious thrill as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.”

They sparked his imagination enough he made them his

Finding Middle-Earth

1914 Tolkien was determined to finish his degree before enlisting,

but everyone else including his brother had He enrolled in a program that allowed him to remain studying

at Oxford but go through army training at the same time Christmas vacation that year he meet up with the T.C.B.C. – it

was for the last time Two of them died in the war

The following June he completed his degree and was sent to war the next month

November 1916 he was sent to hospital with trench fever and eventually sent home

He started writing during this healing period

First World War

He worked on a team creating the Oxford

English Dictionary He was assigned to define the words: warm,

wasp, water, wick and winter His first son John was born in November of

1917 1920, he got a job at Leeds University as

Reader in English Language Their second son Michael was born October

1920

After the War

He moved to Leeds by himself, leaving the family in

Oxford until Edith was ready to move in 1921 He visited on the weekends

Edith was not happy at first to move, but liked it when she got there – it lacked the formality and snobbery she disliked of Oxford and she made friends

Tolkien was good at teaching and well liked He drew in students to specialize in linguistics He kept up his own writing

Stories and poems that were precursors to his Lord of the Rings work

His tenure ended in 1924 Their 3rd son Christopher was born in November 1924

Leeds

He got a job in 1925 as professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford

and moved back The family moved around in Oxford several times but remained

in Oxford till 1968 Student response to him was varied, but he often had

students turn up to his lectures who were not registered for the class

The University required professors to give minimum 36 lectures or classes a year In his 2nd year, Tolkien gave 136 due to staff shortages

His real work begun at this time as well when his storytelling and languages grew to involve the people and places the languages would have arose out of

Their 4th child, Priscilla was born in 1929 He retired in 1959

Back to Oxford

“I do not like giving "facts" about myself other

than "dry" ones (which anyway are quite as relevant to my books as any other more juicy details). Not simply for personal reasons; but also because I object to the contemporary trend in criticism, with its excessive interest in the details of the lives of authors and artists. They only distract attention from an author's works … and end … in becoming the main interest.”

He would however respond to serious letters from readers about his work

Personal Life

[Tolkien] and Edith were still very different people with

widely different interests, and even after fifty years of marriage they were not always ideal company for each other. Occasionally there were moments of irritation between them, just as there had been throughout their lives. But there was still, as there always had been, great love and affection, perhaps even more now that the strain of bringing up a family had passed.-from Humphrey Carpenter, authorized by Tolkien’s heirs after his death

They were married 55 years until Edith passed away in 1971, age 82, he died 2 years later, age 81

Married Life

At Christmas times the children, as most, wrote

letters to Santa Tolkien would write back to them as Santa with tales

of the North Pole, creating a characters who would develop and re-appear throughout the years

He did this for 19 years until 1939 when the children were a bit too old for it, and WW2 was coming

He would tell the children stories at bed, epically if they could not sleep

Tom Bombadil, and early version of a Hobbit, originated as a story for his kids as well He was modeled on one of Michael’s dolls, which

John had stuffed down a toilet to be saved by Tolkien

Children’s Stories

Seems to have been a warm, close

relationship with all of his children John became a Roman Catholic priest Michael became a schoolmaster Priscilla became a social worker Christopher took up his father’s work

becoming his literary executor, and editor of his un-finished work

The Children

In a family memoir by John and Priscilla:

Christopher was always much concerned with the consistency of the story and on one occasion … interrupted: 'Last time, you said Bilbo's front door was blue, and you said Thorin had a golden tassel on this hood, but you've just said that Bilbo's front door was green, and the tassel on Thorin's hood was silver'; at which point Ronald exclaimed 'Damn the boy!' and strode across the room to make a note.

He served the WW2 in South Africa, then returned to Oxford He was a member of his father’s club the Inklings and it

was he not his father who read new sections of Lord of the Rings to them for review

Christopher Tolkien

the person most likely to know what he was about.

And the knowledge that he wanted me to be his literary executor gave me the confidence to do it. I could not help him in his lifetime as much as I wished, for just to sort out his papers, which were in an enormous mess, would have meant asking him to step aside from them for a year or two. Since his death I've seen far more of his total literary and moral purpose than before. I've had his whole opus spread out in front of me, letters, papers, essays—and more than he ever had, because of the confusion the papers were in.

Christopher Tolkien

They were friends for about 40 years

They met in 1926 at an English Department tea Lewis was as important as Tolkien’s children were in

the development of Lord of the Rings They were both members of the Inklings were

members could read their works in progress and get advise and opinions A later life version of the T.C.B.S. The group met at a pub called The Eagle and Child It was to this group that Tolkien read The Hobbit &

Lord of the Rings and Lewis Out of the Silent Planet

C.S. Lewis

The friends had differing views on religion Tolkien was Roman Catholic, Lewis was Protestant Lewis could not accept Tolkien’s religious views

and Tolkien could not accept Lewis’s They also had different views as to what

mythology was Lewis thought it a kind of lie Tolkien took it as a way of showing the truth

They drifted apart to the point that when Lewis got married Tolkien didn’t know till he read it in the paper

C.S. Lewis

When he begin writing The Hobbit is un-known, but it was

Tolkien family story like the Santa story that was told in many forms many a time

It did start sometime in the early 1930’s with the sentence “ In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” and everything spiraled from there

It was a children’s story, which Lewis said was good, but was not sure children would like it

He had written an incomplete version of it that his family and few others knew about One person who did know about it was family friend and ex-

student Elaine Griffiths, who worked at a publishing firm, who told a collouge Susan Dagnall about it

The Hobbit

Dagnall borrowed the manuscript from Tolkien, read

it and asked him to finish it for publication October 1936 it was finished At the publishing firm – Allen & Unwin – the chairman

tested it out on his 10 year old son Rayner He approved and was paid a shilling for his work Rayner later took over the firm and was responsible

for the publication of Lord of the Rings It was published September 1937 and was sold out

before the start of Christmas It was published in the United States soon after

Hobbit

Tolkien was eager to see The Silmarillon published so

when asked for a sequel to The Hobbit, he put this forth as well as Lord of the Rings, to Allen and Unwin in 1937 He was told that is wasn’t what they were looking for in a

sequel He put it forth to Collins as well who were also looking to

publish The Hobbit’s sequel – this time he only submitted The Silmarillion He was told they would publish if he finished it Tolkien then offered them Lord of the Rings

He was later so busy with other projects he never finished this – even thought it was most important to him

The Silmarillion

He was upset with Unwin whose son, Rayner had been

the child to approve The Hobbit, had said in a letter not intended for Tolkien to see, that he didn’t think The Silmarillion should be published

While he was very upset it meant he was under no obligation to Allen & Unwin, and could have Collins publish his work

Because The Silmarillion was not yet complete he had a similar situation all over again with Collins

He received a letter from Rayner asking about his publication plans – he had calmed down by now and published it with the first company Allen & Unwin

Publications

When he started writing LOTR in the late 1930’s, is was to be just as light and

aimed at children as The Hobbit He ran into some problems when he tried brining in The Silmarillion to the sequel Once it really started moving though, Aug 1938 he wrote:

In the last two or three days, after the benefit of idleness and open air, and the sanctioned neglect of duty, I have begun again on the sequel to the "Hobbit"—The Lord of the Ring. It is now flowing along and getting quite out of hand. It has reached about Chapter VII and progresses toward quite unforeseen goals. I must say I think it is a good deal better in places and some ways than the predecessor; but that does not say that I think it either more suitable or more adapted for its audience. For one thing it is, like my own children (who have the immediate serial rights), rather "older".… If the weather is wet in the next fortnight we may have got still further on. But it is no bed-time story.

A month later clarifying: When I spoke, in an earlier letter to Mr. Furth, of this sequel getting "out of hand", I

did not mean it to be complimentary to the process. I really only meant it was … becoming more terrifying than The Hobbit. It may prove quite unsuitable. It is more "adult".… The darkness of the present days has had some effect on it.

He does refer here to the beginning of WW2 but he believed his work was a mythology, a truth to be applied to many situations, not a fantasy version of a real war

Beginnings of Lord of the Rings

They divided it into the three parts They felt it was a bit risky so they told Tolkien he would

get no money until the publishing costs had been recovered then they money would be split 50/50

Part 1 & 2 were out in 1954, part 3 in 1955 They printed 3.5 thousand copies of book 1 which sold

out in 6 weeks The printing costs were regained a year after the 3rd

book came out He finally got paid in 1956, his first check for £35,000

Lord of the Rings Publication

1965, American Publisher Ace printed an unofficial version

of Lord of the Rings, U.S copyright laws at the time permitted this

The official American publisher, Houghton Mifflin / Ballantine Books realized they needed a superior edition to compete It took time do this and by the time they got it, Ace Books

were already selling Tolkien received a lot of fan mail and began adding to each

letter he responded to, asking people to buy the official one, that he approved of and was getting paid for It worked, and the Sci-Fi Writers of America put pressure on

Ace who agreed to cease printing it

American Publishing

Places Named After Tolkien

Information from www.tolkienlibrary.comSep. 5, 2012 by Pieter Collier

Crater on Mercury

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved a proposal to assign names to nine impact craters on the planet Mercury.

Mercury's north polar region is of high scientific interest because of the shadowed craters there that host radar-bright deposits that may consist of water ice. All of the nine newly named craters host such deposits. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, they are all named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors or other contributors to the humanities.

One of the craters has been named in honour of JRR Tolkien.

Asteroid 2675 Tolkien

2675 Tolkien is a small main belt asteroid, which was discovered by M. Watt on April 14, 1982 at the Anderson Mesa station, which is operated by the Lowell Observatory.

Asteroid Tolkien sticks between Jupiter and Mars with no propensity to ever cross the Earth. Tolkien has an absolute magnitude (brightness) of 12.5. You can only see up to magnitude 6.0 with your bare eyes, unfortunately. And the asteroid is probably much, much fainter than even that from our position on Earth. You'll probably need some mega-telescope to glimpse it.

To honour J.R.R. Tolkien some more the same person M. Watt named the second asteroid he discovered 'Bilbo'. 2291 Bilbo is also a main-belt asteroid and was discovered on April 21, 1982.

Tolkien Neighbourhood

In the Dutch town of Geldrop, near Eindhoven in The Netherlands, the streets of an entire neighbourhood are named after Tolkien himself (Tolkien Avenue) and some of the best-known characters from his books. The neighbourhood was built in 1998 to 2000 and exists of 107 exclusive houses, designed by the architect office Van den Pauwert.

The neighbourhood is full of streets named after the characters from J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium, while the main road is named Tolkien Avenue (Dutch: Laan van Tolkien). Though the neighbourhood has streets with names of lesser known characters as Farin, Cirion and Silmariën, there is no street named after one of the best known characters, Bilbo Baggins.

Tolkien Tree

In 2006 the Wilderness Committee launched a preservation campaign to force the Canadian government to take urgent action and ban old growth logging: Protect Vancouver Island's Ancient Forests.

Two of Canada's widest trees were recently discovered by the Wilderness Committee in the Upper Walbran Valley And of all the places and things named after Tolkien this was probably the biggest honour ever, one of the old trees was named after the author Tolkien.

It is not just an old tree, but it is a giant old tree! The ancient cedar named "Tolkien Giant" measures 4.76 m (15.7 ft) in diameter.

Ken Wu, who is pictured beside this magnificent unprotected big tree, reminds us: "We're so incredibly fortunate here to have these gargantuan sized old growth trees still growing in wilderness ecosystems." The senseless killing of these last big trees is an ecological crime that has yet to be fully exposed.

Let us hope Giant Tolkien lives on and on, and when all rooms, pubs, houses, boats are long gone and forgotten.. I secretly hope Giant Tolkien will still be around and inspire people just like the author does.

Places Tolkien Fans Should Visit

Information from www.tolkienlibrary.comAug. 29, 2012 by Imogen Reed

The Lauterbrunnen Valley, Switzerland

When Tolkien sat down and sketched many of the locations from Middle-earth, the startling similarity between his drawing of the Elvish outpost Rivendell and the actual pictorial landscape of Lauterbrunnen is easily evident. It is no surprise to find out that Tolkien travelled to the valley during his late teens where he must have been captivated by the rolling hills and river Weisse Lütschine cutting its way through the valley, which probably formed the inspiration for the Bruinen River (River Loudwater) of Middle-earth.

Tolkien’s Home in Oxford

Just as important as Birmingham where Tolkien grew up, Oxford is where he lived, worked, socialised and died. Oxford is also the place where Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings. Only a blue plaque signifies the importance of 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford where Tolkien penned his famous works. However, as it took him 17 years to complete the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit in its cramped rooms, the unimposing cottage is certainly a must see for any Tolkien fan.

The Eagle and Child

Tolkien was a keen drinker and enjoyed public houses. In Oxford, his local was the Eagle and Child where the great man drank for over 30 years. He was a regular within the pub's walls and often spent time with other literary figures of the age such as CS Lewis. Tolkien, Lewis and other writers, formed a literary club known as the Inklings, who would read passages of each other's work in the pub, which is now commemorated by a plaque.

The Somme

Tolkien was one of the unfortunate many that fought in the Battle of the Somme in Northern France during the First World War, the events of which had a huge impact on his life and beliefs. As a serving Signalling officer for the 11th Battalion of The Lancashire Fusiliers, Tolkien lost many friends, including school chums Robert Gilson and Geoffrey Bache Smith. Tolkien himself was probably saved by contracting trench fever, which forced him to return to England to convalesce. However, the war affected him greatly. He wrote many times on his hatred for war, whatever the cause, which is particularly evident to the letters sent to his son, Christopher during the Second World War. Perhaps his descriptions of the desolation following the battles in the Silmarillion owe much to his wartime experiences, in particular, the devastating effect of Morgoth's monstrous iron dragons, which perhaps owe homage to the use of tanks for the first time during the Battle of the Somme.