J. R. R. Tolkien
Author (1892–1973)
John Ronald Reul Tolkien lost both his parents at a young age. Before her death, his mother, a devout Catholic, appointed a priest of the Birmingham Oratory to serve as his guardian. Tolkien’s studies were interrupted by service in the Great War, where he witnessed scenes of apocalyptic violence before trench fever sent him home. Many of his closest friends never returned.
Otherwise his life was spent in the relative calm of academic life at Oxford. Tolkien was a prodigious scholar of philology and Old English. This equipped him for the work that ensured his fame: his epic creation of “Middle Earth” in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Though he drew on Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology and legend, Tolkien in effect created a new genre of high fantasy, which ultimately, as he believed would be plain, reflected deeply Christian themes of sin, redemption, love, and self-sacrifice.
He was part of an informal literary circle that included C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, and other writers who shared his interest in narrative and Christianity. Tolkien, an ardent Catholic who attended daily Mass, considered the Eucharist to be the center of his life. He wrote to his son, “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth.”
Tolkien died on September 2, 1973.
“All that is gold does not glitter, / Not all those who wander are lost; / The old that is strong does not wither. / Deep roots are not reached by the frost.” —J. R. R. Tolkien
