About+the+author

=J.R.R. Tolkien= J.R.R. Tolkien (John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) was born 3rd January 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State and died 2nd September 1973. He is ranked as one of our time’s greatest author by many, and his works have been read by thousands worldwide. He is famous for his fantasy works like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, but he has also written children books and critic texts, unknown to the majority of his readers. His son, Christopher Tolkien, has published several of his works after his father’s death.

Life
Tolkien was, as previous stated, born in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State. This was because his father got a position as the head of a British bank’s office in Bloemfontein. When he was 3 years old they moved back to England. His father was supposed to move after them, but he died, which lead to Tolkien growing up without a father. When he was 12, his mother died of diabetes. After his mother’s death he was raised by Father Francis Morgan, and continued to live near Birmingham, like before her death. When he lived with Father Francis Morgan he met, and fell in love with, Edith Bratt. Morgan didn’t let them meet, but as soon as Tolkien was 21, he met up with Edith. They married in 1916. He volunteered for the British army, to fight in World War I the same year, and would probably have died there if he hadn’t gotten trench fever. After the war he started working at The Oxford English Dictionary, until he was offered a position at the University of Leeds. He worked there for 5 years, as a English lector, before he moved back to Oxford in 1925. In Oxford he worked as a professor of Anglo-Saxon (also called Old English) at Pembroke College. In 1945 he moved to Merton College, also in Oxford, and worked there as a professor in English until he retired, in 1959. He died 2nd September 1973, 81 years old.

Writing
Tolkien was interested in mythology all his life, and he even learnt Finnish, just to be able to read Kalevala, which is an epic, old, Finnish text that was collected by Elias Lönnrot. He especially started writing when he was ill from trench fever. He also loved writing, and every Christmas he wrote letters, which were supposed to be from Santa Claus, to his children. These stories were later released as The Father Christmas Letters. Later, his most famous works became works like “The Hobbit”, “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Silmarillion”.