J.R.R. Tolkien Research Paper
“J.R.R. Tolkien.” On January 3rd, 1892, in the little town of Bloemfontein, South Africa, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born to Arthur Tolkien and Mable Suffield. Just a few years earlier, Arthur Tolkien had to move to South Africa to take a job managing a bank, because his piano manufacturing business went under (Notable British Authors 12). Mable soon joined him and they had their two sons, Ronald and Hilary soon after. While in South Africa, Mable noticed young Ronald was starting to look unhealthy and very sick (Stade 8). She thought it would be best if she took Ronald back home. Grudgingly, Arthur let his wife and two young sons go back to England. Soon after Ronald, Mable, and Hilary left South Africa, Arthur Tolkien passed away, leaving the little family with almost no money (Stade 14). Mable taught her kids through home schooling, all the way through elementary school, teaching them many languages, such as Norse, Gothic, Finnish, and Welsh (Stade 23). These inspired Ronald to one day write his own languages. Sadly, when Ronald was only 12, his mother passed away from diabetes, leaving both her children as orphans (Stade 25). Father Francis Morgan agreed to take them into his orphanage (Notable British Authors 33). In that orphanage, Ronald met his future wife, Edith Bratt, whom was three years older (Notable British Authors 34). Father Morgan saw how smart Ronald was, and feared Edith would distract him from his school work, and cut off all communications until Ronald was 18 and had finished his studies (Stade 28). When he and Edith reunited in 1913, they found over the years that they had very little in common, but still on the night before his battalion was sent to France, Edith and Ronald were married (Stade 34). Through the years, Edith and Ronald had four children, the first born in November of 1917 (Shippey 78). In the privacy of his home Tolkien wrote many short stories for his children as bedtime stories. These eventually became one