J.R.R. Tolkien

I have never been much of a Tolkien fan, but after reading and discussing him in class, I decided to go and do some research of my own to find out more about the man behind the stories. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892. As a young boy, he was bitten by a baboon spider. It has been theorized that the spider in The Hobbit evolved from his childhood memory of the spider that bit him. He was also quite the explorer as a young boy. He loved to go on new adventures in his backyard, and mainly in his imagination. He also began learning Latin at a young age, allowing him to have an expansive vocabulary for such a small child. Tolkien learned to read at the age of four to read, and among his favorites was George MacDonald. At the age of sixteen, he met his future wife, but was forbidden to see her because of their religious differences (he was Catholic and she was a protestant). At the age of 21, he went in search of her to rekindle their relationship, but she was engaged to be married to another man. Upon his confession of the enormous love he had for her, she returned the ring to the other man, and converted to Catholicism to marry her beloved Tolkien. As an adult, Tolkien (along with his expansive writing) became a professor at Oxford, and was involved in a literary "club" called "Inklings." Among the members of this club was the famous C.S. Lewis, author of "The Chronicles of Narnia," and "Mere Christianity." Tolkien died at the age of 82, in 1973, just two years after his beloved Edith.