50 free J. R. R. Tolkien trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was J. R. R. Tolkien born in 1892?
Bloemfontein
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.
Q 02What bit the infant Tolkien in the garden in South Africa?
A large baboon spider
Some see the bite echoed in Shelob and the spiders of Mirkwood, though he said he had no memory of it.
Q 03Tolkien's aunt Jane's farm gave its name to which place in his fiction?
Bag End
He grew up exploring Sarehole Mill, Moseley Bog and the Clent, Lickey and Malvern Hills, all of which fed the books.
Q 04Which children's book did the young Tolkien dislike?
Treasure Island
He found Alice merely 'amusing', but loved George MacDonald's fantasies and Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.
Q 05Tolkien's mother Mabel died in 1904 of what, when he was 12?
Acute diabetes
Insulin was not discovered until 1921; her Baptist family had cut her off when she became a Catholic in 1900.
Q 06Who became guardian of the orphaned Tolkien brothers?
Father Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory
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
Nevbosh followed, then his own Naffarin; he also learned Esperanto before 1909.
Q 08What did the initials of Tolkien's semi-secret school group, the T.C.B.S., stand for?
Tea Club and Barrovian Society
The name nodded to Barrow's Stores, where they drank tea; two of the four members died on the Somme.
Q 09Tolkien said Bilbo's crossing of the Misty Mountains was based on his own 1911 hike where?
The Swiss Alps
The party of 12 walked from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and Mürren; 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
He started in classics but switched in 1913 to English language and literature.
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
On the evening of his 21st birthday he wrote proposing; she had already accepted George Field, but changed her mind.
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
He handled the history and etymology of Germanic words; he then tutored at the women's colleges as a suitably married don.
Q 22At which university did Tolkien become the youngest member of academic staff in 1920?
Leeds
There he produced A Middle English Vocabulary and co-edited the standard edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Q 23Tolkien returned to Oxford in 1925 as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of what?
Anglo-Saxon
He held a Pembroke College fellowship and wrote The Hobbit at 20 Northmoor Road.
She returned George Field's ring; the Fields were 'insulted and angry'.
Q 14Tolkien and Edith married in March 1916 at a Catholic church in which town?
Warwick
He admired her for marrying a man with no job, little money and every likelihood of being killed in the war.
Q 15Tolkien was commissioned in 1915 into which regiment?
The Lancashire Fusiliers
He served as a signals officer with the 11th Battalion and felt an 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
She followed him on a map of the Western Front, dreading every knock at the door.
Q 17Which illness, carried by lice, sent Tolkien home from the Somme in November 1916?
Trench fever
He caught it as his battalion attacked Regina Trench; a chaplain recorded 'hordes of lice' feasting on the officers.
Q 18Which T.C.B.S. member was killed on the first day of the Somme leading his men at Beaumont Hamel?
Rob Gilson
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.
Q 19While recovering in Staffordshire, Tolkien began writing what, starting with The Fall of Gondolin?
The Book of Lost Tales
It was his attempt to create a mythology for England, never completed.
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.
Q 24Tolkien's 1936 lecture, a turning point in scholarship on an Old English poem, was titled what?
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
He argued the monsters were essential, not childish; his own Beowulf translation, finished in 1926, was published only in 2014.
Q 25How did Tolkien open his Beowulf lectures, according to Humphrey Carpenter?
By striding in and shouting 'Hwæt!' in Old English
W. H. Auden later wrote to thank him: 'The voice was the voice of Gandalf.'
Q 26How did The Hobbit reach a publisher in 1936?
An Allen & Unwin employee, Susan Dagnall, heard of it and persuaded him to submit it
He had written it some years before for his own children and never expected it to sell.
Q 27In January 1939 Tolkien was earmarked for what wartime role?
Codebreaker at the Government Code and Cypher School
He took a course at the London headquarters in March but was told in October his services were not required.
Q 28In what year did Tolkien complete The Lord of the Rings, about a decade after the first sketches?
1948
He had moved to Merton College in 1945 as Merton Professor and stayed until retiring in 1959.
Q 29How many children did Tolkien and Edith have?
Four
John, Michael, Christopher and Priscilla; he sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas each year.
Q 30Who 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.