50 Fun Facts About J. R. R. Tolkien

In which city was J. R. R. Tolkien born in 1892?

His father Arthur had gone out to head the local branch of an English bank; he died of rheumatic fever before he could rejoin the family in England.

What bit the infant Tolkien in the garden in South Africa?

Some see the bite echoed in Shelob and the spiders of Mirkwood, though he said he had no memory of it.

Tolkien's aunt Jane's farm gave its name to which place in his fiction?

He grew up exploring Sarehole Mill, Moseley Bog and the Clent, Lickey and Malvern Hills, all of which fed the books.

Which children's book did the young Tolkien dislike?

He found Alice merely 'amusing', but loved George MacDonald's fantasies and Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.

Tolkien's mother Mabel died in 1904 of what, when he was 12?

Insulin was not discovered until 1921; her Baptist family had cut her off when she became a Catholic in 1900.

Who became guardian of the orphaned Tolkien brothers?

Tolkien called him 'an upper-class Welsh-Spaniard Tory' from whom he 'first learned charity and forgiveness'.

Tolkien's first encounter with an invented language was Animalic, created by whom?

Nevbosh followed, then his own Naffarin; he also learned Esperanto before 1909.

What did the initials of Tolkien's semi-secret school group, the T.C.B.S., stand for?

The name nodded to Barrow's Stores, where they drank tea; two of the four members died on the Somme.

Tolkien said Bilbo's crossing of the Misty Mountains was based on his own 1911 hike where?

The party of 12 walked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and Mürren; the Silberhorn became 'the Silvertine of my dreams'.

Where at Oxford did Tolkien study from 1911, graduating with first-class honours in 1915?

He started in classics but switched in 1913 to English language and literature.

How did the teenage Tolkien and Edith Bratt amuse themselves in Birmingham teashops?

They moved to the next table when the sugar bowl ran out; both were orphans, and by summer 1909 they were in love.

Until what age did Father Morgan forbid Tolkien to contact Edith?

On the evening of his 21st birthday he wrote proposing; she had already accepted George Field, but changed her mind.

Where did Tolkien and Edith talk under a railway viaduct in January 1913, ending with her accepting his proposal?

She returned George Field's ring; the Fields were 'insulted and angry'.

Tolkien and Edith married in March 1916 at a Catholic church in which town?

He admired her for marrying a man with no job, little money and every likelihood of being killed in the war.

Tolkien was commissioned in 1915 into which regiment?

He served as a signals officer with the 11th Battalion and felt an affinity for his working-class Lancashire men.

How did Tolkien let Edith track his movements in France despite army censorship?

She followed him on a map of the Western Front, dreading every knock at the door.

Which illness, carried by lice, sent Tolkien home from the Somme in November 1916?

He caught it as his battalion attacked Regina Trench; a chaplain recorded 'hordes of lice' feasting on the officers.

Which T.C.B.S. member was killed on the first day of the Somme leading his men at Beaumont Hamel?

Geoffrey Smith died later in the battle when a shell hit a first-aid post; Tolkien's battalion was almost wiped out after he left.

While recovering in Staffordshire, Tolkien began writing what, starting with The Fall of Gondolin?

It was his attempt to create a mythology for England, never completed.

Edith's dance in a hemlock glade at Roos, Yorkshire, inspired which tale?

'I never called Edith Luthien—but she was the source of the story,' he wrote after her death; the names are on their gravestone.

Tolkien's first civilian job after the war was working on which letter of the Oxford English Dictionary?

He handled the history and etymology of Germanic words; he then tutored at the women's colleges as a suitably married don.

At which university did Tolkien become the youngest member of academic staff in 1920?

There he produced A Middle English Vocabulary and co-edited the standard edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Tolkien returned to Oxford in 1925 as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of what?

He held a Pembroke College fellowship and wrote The Hobbit at 20 Northmoor Road.

Tolkien's 1936 lecture, a turning point in scholarship on an Old English poem, was titled what?

He argued the monsters were essential, not childish; his own Beowulf translation, finished in 1926, was published only in 2014.

How did Tolkien open his Beowulf lectures, according to Humphrey Carpenter?

W. H. Auden later wrote to thank him: 'The voice was the voice of Gandalf.'

How did The Hobbit reach a publisher in 1936?

He had written it some years before for his own children and never expected it to sell.

In January 1939 Tolkien was earmarked for what wartime role?

He took a course at the London headquarters in March but was told in October his services were not required.

In what year did Tolkien complete The Lord of the Rings, about a decade after the first sketches?

He had moved to Merton College in 1945 as Merton Professor and stayed until retiring in 1959.

How many children did Tolkien and Edith have?

John, Michael, Christopher and Priscilla; he sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas each year.

Who nominated Tolkien for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961?

Lewis was his closest friend among the Inklings, and Tolkien had been a key influence on Lewis's conversion to Christianity.

Why did the Tolkiens move to Bournemouth in retirement?

He missed the Inklings badly; fan attention had already forced him to remove his phone number from the directory.

Which book of the Bible did Tolkien translate for The Jerusalem Bible (1966)?

He had been assigned much more but other commitments left him time only for Jonah and some criticism of colleagues' work.

What honour did Tolkien receive at Buckingham Palace in March 1972?

Oxford gave him an honorary doctorate the same year and Edinburgh followed in 1973.

Which names are engraved on the Tolkiens' shared gravestone at Wolvercote Cemetery?

He had Luthien cut for Edith in 1971; Beren was added when he joined her 21 months later.

Tolkien died in September 1973 of what?

He was 81; his estate was valued at £190,577.

Tolkien described his political leanings as tending 'more and more to' what?

He meant 'abolition of control, not whiskered men with bombs', and said he was 'not a democrat' because humility and equality are spiritual, not political.

Which side did Tolkien support in the Spanish Civil War?

He admired the Catholic poet Roy Campbell and later called anti-Franco remarks by Lewis and Auden 'Red Propaganda'.

Tolkien designed Quenya on phonaesthetic grounds. On which real language was its sound system based?

It drew ingredients from Finnish, Welsh, English and Greek; Sindarin is the other developed Elvish tongue.

Which future fantasy novelist helped Christopher Tolkien shape The Silmarillion for its 1977 publication?

Christopher, the literary executor, later edited the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth.

To which American institution did Tolkien sell the manuscripts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?

The Silmarillion papers and his academic work went instead to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

To which company did Tolkien sell the film, stage and merchandise rights of his Middle-earth books in 1968?

They never made a film; John Boorman planned a live-action version in the early 1970s.

Who directed the first film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, an animated rotoscoped feature in 1978?

Rankin-Bass had done an animated Hobbit in 1977 and later a Return of the King covering the parts Bakshi never reached.

In the BBC's 2003 'Big Read' survey, The Lord of the Rings was found to be what?

A German poll a year later found the same among about 250,000 readers.

Which artist included Tolkien in his 2012 reworking of the Sgt. Pepper cover?

Blake designed the original 1967 Beatles sleeve.

Which schoolboy book by his later Oxford tutor Joseph Wright inspired Tolkien?

He taught Gothic and Old Icelandic himself in later years and was proficient in modern Icelandic.

Tolkien's early poem The Lonely Isle was inspired by what?

He wrote it while bored at the base depot at Étaples, waiting to join his battalion.

Which fellow Inkling did Tolkien help move from atheism to Christianity?

Tolkien himself was a devout Catholic who told a child that life's purpose was to increase our knowledge of God and be moved to praise.

Which posthumous 1980 collection was assembled from Tolkien's more fragmentary writings?

The twelve-volume History of Middle-earth followed, tracing the endless redrafting.

Which illustrator, Tolkien's favourite for Farmer Giles of Ham, was personally known to him?

Donald Swann, who set The Road Goes Ever On to music, was another personal acquaintance.

Tolkien's Sir Gawain edition was co-produced with which scholar at Leeds?

His own translations of Sir Gawain, Pearl and Sir Orfeo waited until 1975 to be published.