J. R. R. Tolkien Trivia
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98 free J. R. R. Tolkien trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This J. R. R. Tolkien trivia quiz is about the man rather than Middle-earth: for the books themselves see our Lord of the Rings and Hobbit quizzes. It starts in Bloemfontein with a bank-manager father, a baboon spider and a mother who taught him Latin and botany before dying of diabetes at 34, then follows him through Sarehole and Bag End, the Birmingham Oratory priest who became his guardian, the invented languages of his teens, the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, and the forbidden courtship of Edith Bratt that resumed the night he turned 21. The second half covers Oxford, the Somme and the trench fever that sent him home, the school friends who did not come back, the letter W at the Oxford English Dictionary, Leeds, the Beowulf lecture that began with a shout of 'Hwæt!', the schoolgirl-free tutoring at the women's colleges, the Hobbit that reached a publisher by accident, the near-miss as a wartime codebreaker, the Inklings, C. S. Lewis's Nobel nomination, the flight from fans to Bournemouth, the Jerusalem Bible, and the grave at Wolvercote marked Beren and Lúthien. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our C. S. Lewis, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit quizzes next.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was J. R. R. Tolkien born in 1892?
Bloemfontein
Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, on 3 January 1892, where his father Arthur managed the local branch of the Bank of Africa; he died of rheumatic fever in 1896 before rejoining the family in England.
Q 02What bit the infant Tolkien in the garden in South Africa?
A large baboon spider
As a toddler Tolkien was bitten by a large baboon spider in the family garden in South Africa; he later said he had no memory of it, though readers see the bite echoed in Shelob and the spiders of Mirkwood.
Q 03Tolkien's aunt Jane's farm gave its name to which place in his fiction?
Bag End
Bag End was the local name of his aunt Jane Neave's farm at Dormston, Worcestershire, which Tolkien visited; he borrowed it for Bilbo's home under the Hill.
Q 04Which children's book did the young Tolkien dislike?
Treasure Island
As a boy Tolkien disliked Treasure Island, Hans Andersen's stories and The Pied Piper; he found Alice merely amusing and loved George MacDonald's Curdie books and Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.
Q 05Tolkien's mother Mabel died in 1904 of what, when he was 12?
Acute diabetes
Mabel Tolkien died of acute diabetes in November 1904, aged 34, when insulin treatment was nearly two decades away; her family had cut off support after she became a Catholic in 1900.
Q 06Who became guardian of the orphaned Tolkien brothers?
Father Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory
Father Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory became the brothers' guardian under Mabel's will; Tolkien called him 'an upper-class Welsh-Spaniard Tory' from whom he 'first learned charity and forgiveness'.
Q 07Tolkien's first encounter with an invented language was Animalic, created by whom?
His cousins Mary and Marjorie Incledon
Animalic was invented by his cousins Mary and Marjorie Incledon, built mostly from English animal names; Tolkien and Mary then made Nevbosh, and he went on to his own Naffarin.
Q 08What did the initials of Tolkien's semi-secret school group, the T.C.B.S., stand for?
Tea Club and Barrovian Society
T.C.B.S. stood for Tea Club and Barrovian Society, after the tea the boys brewed in the school library and later drank at Barrow's Stores; two of its core members were killed in 1916.
Q 09Tolkien said Bilbo's crossing of the Misty Mountains was based on his own 1911 hike where?
The Swiss Alps
In summer 1911 Tolkien's party of 12 walked through the Swiss Alps from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, Mürren and the Aletsch glacier; he said the Silberhorn became 'the Silvertine of my dreams'.
Q 10Where at Oxford did Tolkien study from 1911, graduating with first-class honours in 1915?
Exeter College
Tolkien went up to Exeter College, Oxford, in October 1911, started in Classics and switched in 1913 to English Language and Literature, taking first-class honours in 1915.
Q 11How did the teenage Tolkien and Edith Bratt amuse themselves in Birmingham teashops?
Throwing sugar lumps into passers-by's hats
They moved to the next table when the sugar bowl ran out; both were orphans, and by summer 1909 they were in love.
Q 12Until what age did Father Morgan forbid Tolkien to contact Edith?
21
As midnight began his 21st birthday, 3 January 1913, Tolkien wrote to Edith proposing; she was engaged to George Field but broke it off and accepted him.
Q 13Where did Tolkien and Edith talk under a railway viaduct in January 1913, ending with her accepting his proposal?
Cheltenham
Q 21Tolkien's first civilian job after the war was working on which letter of the Oxford English Dictionary?
W
Tolkien joined the Oxford English Dictionary staff after the war and worked on words of Germanic origin beginning with W, such as walrus, wasp and warlock; he then earned extra by tutoring students from the women's colleges.
Q 22At which university did Tolkien become the youngest member of academic staff in 1920?
Leeds
At Leeds Tolkien was appointed Reader in English Language in 1920, the youngest member of staff, and became Professor in 1924; there he wrote A Middle English Vocabulary and co-edited Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Q 23Tolkien returned to Oxford in 1925 as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of what?
Anglo-Saxon
On 8 January 1913 they met at Cheltenham, where Edith was living, and walked out to talk under a railway viaduct; she agreed to marry Tolkien and returned George Field's ring.
Q 14Tolkien and Edith married in March 1916 at a Catholic church in which town?
Warwick
They married on 22 March 1916 at St Mary Immaculate, the Catholic church in Warwick, where Edith had moved in 1913; Tolkien admired her for marrying a man with no job, little money and a war ahead.
Q 15Tolkien was commissioned in 1915 into which regiment?
The Lancashire Fusiliers
Tolkien was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers in July 1915 and served as signals officer of its 11th Battalion, feeling a lasting affinity for his working-class Lancashire men.
Q 16How did Tolkien let Edith track his movements in France despite army censorship?
A code of dots in his letters
Army censors barred place names, so Tolkien worked out a code of dots in his letters that told Edith where he was; she followed his movements on a map of the Western Front.
Q 17Which illness sent Tolkien home from the Somme in November 1916?
Trench fever
Trench fever, spread by body lice, struck Tolkien on 27 October 1916 after his battalion's attack on Regina Trench; he was shipped to England on 8 November and never returned to the front.
Q 18Which T.C.B.S. member was killed leading his men on the first day of the Somme?
Rob Gilson
Rob Gilson, a lieutenant in the Cambridgeshire battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, was killed on 1 July 1916 leading his men across no man's land near La Boisselle; Tolkien heard the news from Geoffrey Smith.
Q 19While recovering in Staffordshire, Tolkien began writing what, starting with The Fall of Gondolin?
The Book of Lost Tales
The Book of Lost Tales, begun at Great Haywood in early 1917 with The Fall of Gondolin, was Tolkien's first attempt at a mythology for England; he abandoned it and reworked the stories for decades.
Q 20Edith's dance in a hemlock glade at Roos, Yorkshire, inspired which tale?
Beren and Lúthien
'I never called Edith Luthien—but she was the source of the story,' he wrote after her death; the names are on their gravestone.
The Rawlinson and Bosworth chair is in Anglo-Saxon; Tolkien held it from 1925 to 1945 with a Pembroke College fellowship, and wrote The Hobbit at his home at 20 Northmoor Road.
Q 24Tolkien's 1936 lecture, a turning point in scholarship on an Old English poem, was titled what?
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, his 1936 Gollancz Memorial Lecture to the British Academy, argued the monsters were central to the poem's art; his own prose Beowulf translation, finished in 1926, appeared only in 2014.
Q 25In January 1939 Tolkien was earmarked for what wartime role?
Codebreaker at the Government Code and Cypher School
The Foreign Office's Government Code and Cypher School earmarked Tolkien as a potential codebreaker in January 1939; he took a training course at its London headquarters in March but was told in October his services were not required.
Q 26In which year did Tolkien finish drafting The Lord of the Rings?
1948
Tolkien finished drafting the last chapters in a summer 1948 retreat and wrote that autumn that he had brought The Lord of the Rings 'to a successful conclusion'; revision and typing of the final text ran into 1949.
Q 27How many children did Tolkien and Edith have?
Four
John, Michael, Christopher and Priscilla; he sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas each year.
Q 28Who nominated Tolkien for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961?
C. S. Lewis
Lewis was his closest friend among the Inklings, and Tolkien had been a key influence on Lewis's conversion to Christianity.
Q 29Why did the Tolkiens move to Bournemouth in retirement?
Edith enjoyed being a society hostess there
He missed the Inklings badly; fan attention had already forced him to remove his phone number from the directory.
Q 30Which book of the Bible did Tolkien translate for The Jerusalem Bible (1966)?
Jonah
He had been assigned much more but other commitments left him time only for Jonah and some criticism of colleagues' work.