John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Ronald Reuel Tolkien; January 3, 1892, Bloemfontein, Orange Republic - September 2, 1973 Bournemouth, England) - English writer, poet, philologist, professor at Oxford University. He is best known as the author of classic high fantasy works: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.

Tolkien served as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College. Oxford University (1925-1945), Merton's English Language and Literature at Merton College (English) Russian. Oxford University (1945-1959). Together with his close friend C.S. Lewis, he was a member of the informal literary society “Inklings”. On 28 March 1972 he received the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) from Queen Elizabeth II.

After Tolkien's death, his son Christopher produced several works based on his father's extensive corpus of notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. This book, along with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, forms a single collection of tales, poems, histories, artificial languages ​​and literary essays about the fictional world called Arda and its part of Middle-earth. From 1951 to 1955, Tolkien used the word "legendarium" to refer to most of this collection. Many authors wrote fantasy works before Tolkien, but due to his great popularity and strong influence on the genre, many call Tolkien the "father" of modern fantasy literature, meaning mainly "high fantasy".

In 2008, the British newspaper The Times ranked him sixth on its list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2009, the American magazine Forbes named him the fifth highest-earning deceased celebrity.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien - English writer and poet, translator, linguist, philologist, professor at Oxford University - born January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now Free State, South Africa).

His parents, Arthur Ruel Tolkien (1857-1895), an English bank manager, and Mabel Tolkien (née Suffield) (1870-1904), arrived in South Africa shortly before the birth of their son in connection with Arthur's promotion. On February 17, 1894, Arthur and Mabel's second son, Hilary Arthur Ruel, was born.

In February 1896 After the death of the father of the family, the Tolkien family returns to England. Left alone with two children, Mabel asks her relatives for help. Returning home was difficult: Tolkien's mother's relatives did not approve of her marriage. After the death of his father from rheumatic fever, the family settled in Sarehole, near Birmingham. Mabel Tolkien was left alone with two small children in her arms and a very modest income, which was just enough to live on. Trying to find support in life, she immersed herself in religion, converted to Catholicism (this led to a final break with her Anglican relatives) and gave her children an appropriate education; as a result, Tolkien remained a deeply religious man throughout his life. Tolkien's strong religious beliefs played a significant role in C.S.'s conversion. Lewis to Christianity, although, to Tolkien's disappointment, Lewis preferred the Anglican faith to the Catholic faith.

Mabel also taught her son the basics of Latin, and also instilled a love of botany, and Tolkien and early years loved to draw landscapes and trees. By the age of four, thanks to the efforts of his mother, baby Ronald could already read and even write his first letters. He read a lot, and from the very beginning he disliked Stevenson's Treasure Island and the Pied Piper of Hammel by the Brothers Grimm, but he liked Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, stories about Indians, George MacDonald's fantasy works and Andrew's Fairy Book Lang. Tolkien's mother died of diabetes in 1904; Before her death, she entrusted the upbringing of her children to Father Francis Morgan, a priest of the Birmingham church, a strong and extraordinary personality. It was Francis Morgan who developed little Ronald's interest in philology, for which he was later very grateful to him.

Preschool age children spend time in nature. These two years were enough for Tolkien to write all the descriptions of forests and fields in his works. In 1900 Tolkien entered King Edward's School, where he learned Old English and began to study others - Welsh, Old Norse, Finnish, Gothic. He showed early linguistic talent, and after studying Old Welsh and Finnish, he began to develop “Elvish” languages. He subsequently studied at St. Philip's School and Oxford Exeter College.

In 1911 While studying at King Edward's School (Birmingham), Tolkien and three friends - Rob Gilson, Geoffrey Smith and Christopher Wiseman - organized a semi-secret circle called the ChKBO - "Tea Club and Barrovian society" (T.C.B.S., Tea Club and Barrovian Society). This name is due to the fact that friends loved tea, which was sold near the school in the Barrow supermarket, as well as in the school library, although this was prohibited. Even after graduation, members of the Cheka kept in touch, for example, they met in December 1914 at Wiseman's house in London.

Summer 1911 Tolkien visited Switzerland, which he later mentions in a 1968 letter, noting that Bilbo Baggins's journey through the Misty Mountains is based on the route that Tolkien and twelve companions took from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen. In October of the same year, he began his studies at Oxford University (Exeter College).

In 1908 he met Edith Mary Brett, who had a great influence on his work.

Falling in love prevented Tolkien from immediately entering college; besides, Edith was a Protestant and three years older than him. Father Francis took from Ronald honestly that he would not meet with Edith until he turned 21 - that is, until he came of age, when Father Francis ceased to be his guardian. Tolkien kept his promise by not writing a line to Mary Edith until this age. They didn't even meet or talk.

On the evening of the same day, when Tolkien turned 21, he wrote a letter to Edith, declaring his love and proposing his hand and heart. Edith replied that she had already agreed to marry another person because she decided that Tolkien had long forgotten her. Eventually, she returned the engagement ring to her groom and announced that she was marrying Tolkien. In addition, at his insistence, she converted to Catholicism.

The engagement took place in Birmingham in January 1913, and the wedding - March 22, 1916 in the English city of Warwick, in the Catholic Church of St. Mary. His union with Edith Brett turned out to be long and happy. The couple lived together for 56 years and raised three sons: John Francis Ruel (1917), Michael Hilary Ruel (1920), Christopher Ruel (1924), and daughter Priscilla Mary Ruel (1929).

In 1914 Tolkien enrolled in the Military Training Corps in order to delay his conscription in time to complete his bachelor's degree. In 1915 Tolkien graduated with honors from the university and went to serve as a lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers; John was soon drafted to the front and participated in the First World War.

John survived the bloody Battle of the Somme, where two of his best friends from the Cheka (“tea club”) were killed, after which he hated war, contracted typhus and, after long treatment, was sent home with disability.

During his recovery at the farmhouse at Little Haywood in Staffordshire, Tolkien began working on The Book of Lost Tales, starting with The Fall of Gondolin. Throughout 1917 and 1918 He survived several exacerbations of the disease, but recovered enough to serve in various military camps, and rose to the rank of lieutenant. During this time, Edith gave birth to their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien.

He devoted the following years to a scientific career: first he taught at the University of Leeds, in 1922 received a position as Professor of Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature at Oxford University, where he became one of the youngest professors (at 30) and soon earned a reputation as one of the best philologists in the world.

At the same time, he began writing the cycle of myths and legends of Middle-Earth, which would later become The Silmarillion. There were four children in his family, for them he first composed, narrated, and then recorded “The Hobbit,” which was later published in 1937 Sir Stanley Unwin. The Hobbit was a success, and Anuin suggested that Tolkien write a sequel; however, work on the trilogy took a long time and the book was only completed in 1954, when Tolkien was about to retire.

The trilogy was published and was a huge success, which surprised both the author and the publisher. Anuin expected to lose significant money, but he personally loved the book and was eager to publish his friend's work. For ease of publication, the book was divided into three parts, so that after the publication and sale of the first part it would become clear whether the rest were worth printing.

Tolkien's first civilian job after World War I was as an assistant lexicographer. in 1919, when he, discharged from the army, joined the work on the Oxford English Dictionary, where he worked mainly on the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter "W". In 1920 he took up the post of reader (similar in many ways to a lecturer position) in English at the University of Leeds, and (of those hired) became the youngest professor there. During his time at the University, he produced a Dictionary of Middle English and published the final edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (with the philologist Eric Valentine Gordon), a publication that included the original text and commentary, which is often confused with the translation of this work into modern English a language later created by Tolkien along with translations of "Pearl" ("Perle" in Middle English) and "Sir Orfeo". In 1925 Tolkien returned to Oxford, where he took ( before 1945) the position of Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College.

During his Pembroke College days he wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, living at 20 Northmoor Road, North Oxford, where his Blue Plaque was erected in 2002. In 1932 He also published a philological essay on "Nodens" (also "Nodens" - the Celtic god of healing, the sea, the hunt and dogs), continuing Sir Mortimer Wheeler when he left to excavate the Roman asklepion in Gloucestershire, at Lydney Park.

In the 1920s Tolkien undertook the translation of Beowulf, which he completed in 1926, but didn't publish it. The poem was eventually edited by Tolkien's son and published by him in 2014, more than forty years after Tolkien's death and almost 90 years after its completion.

Ten years after completing the translation, Tolkien gave a highly famous lecture on this work entitled "Beowulf: Monsters and Critics", which had a defining influence on Beowulf scholarship.

At the beginning of World War II, Tolkien was considered for the post of codebreaker. In January 1939 he was inquired about the possibility of serving in the cryptographic department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the event of a state of emergency. He agreed and completed a training course at the London headquarters of the Government Communications Centre. Be that as it may, although Tolkien was quite astute to become a codebreaker, in October he was informed that the government did not need his services at the moment. As a result, he never served again.

In 1945 Tolkien became professor of English language and literature at Oxford's Merton College and remained in this post until his resignation. in 1959. For many years he worked as an external examiner at University College Dublin. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland (University College Dublin was part of it).

In 1948 Tolkien completed work on The Lord of the Rings, almost a decade after the first draft. He offered the book to Allen & Unwin. According to Tolkien, The Silmarillion should have been published simultaneously with The Lord of the Rings, but the publishing house did not agree to this. Then in 1950 Tolkien offered his work to Collins, but the publisher's Milton Waldman said the novel was "in dire need of trimming." In 1952 Tolkien wrote again to Allen & Unwin: "I will gladly consider publishing any part of the text." The publisher agreed to publish the novel in its entirety, without cuts.

In the early 1960s The Lord of the Rings was released in the United States with Tolkien's permission by Ballantine Books and was a stunning commercial success. The novel fell on fertile ground: the youth of the 1960s, captivated by the hippie movement and the ideas of peace and freedom, saw in the book the embodiment of many of their dreams. In the mid-1960s The Lord of the Rings is experiencing a real boom. The author himself admitted that success flatters him, but over time he got tired of popularity. He even had to change his phone number because fans were bothering him with calls.

In 1961 Clive S. Lewis lobbied for Tolkien to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. However, Swedish academics rejected the nomination with the wording that Tolkien’s books “can in no way be called prose upper class" The Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric received the prize that year.

Tolkien also translated the book of the prophet Jonah for the publication of the Jerusalem Bible, which was published in 1966.

After the death of his wife in 1971 Tolkien returns to Oxford.

Late 1972 he suffered greatly from indigestion, and an x-ray showed dyspepsia.

September 2, 1973 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien died at the age of eighty-one. The couple were buried in the same grave.

Works published during his lifetime:
1925 - “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (co-authored with E.B. Gordon)
1937 - “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” / The Hobbit or There and Back Again
1945 - “Leaf by Niggle”
1945 - “The Ballad of Aotrou and Itroun” / The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun
1949 - Farmer Giles of Ham
1953 - “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” (play)
1954-1955 - “The Lord of the Rings” / The Lord of the Rings
1954 - “The Fellowship of the Ring”
1954 - “The Two Towers”
1955 - “The Return of the King”
1962 - “The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book” (cycle of poems)
1967 - “The Road Goes Ever On” / The Road Goes Ever On (with Donald Swann)
1967 - Smith of Wootton Major

Published posthumously:
All posthumous editions were edited by the writer's son, Christopher Tolkien.
1976 - “Letters from Father Christmas” / The Father Christmas Letters
1977 - “The Silmarillion” / The Silmarillion
1980 - “Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth”
1983 - “The Monsters And The Critics And Others Esseys”
1983-1996 - “The History of Middle-earth” in 12 volumes
1997 - "Fairy tales Fairyland» / Tales from the Perilous Realm
1998 - “Roverandom” / The Roverandom
2007 - “The Children of Húrin”
2009 - “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun”
2009 - “The History of The Hobbit”
2013 - “The Fall of Arthur” / The Fall of Arthur
2014 - “Beowulf”: translation and commentary / Beowulf - A Translation And Commentary
2015 - “The Story of Kullervo” / The Story of Kullervo
2017 - “The Tale of Beren and Lúthien” / Beren and Lúthien

Keywords: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, fantasy, biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, download detailed biography, download for free, English literature of the 20th century, life and work of J.R.R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien(full name - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien) (1892-1973) - English writer. He became famous for his books The Hobbit or There and Back Again and The Lord of the Rings, although he published many other works. After his death, the book “The Silmarillion” was published based on the surviving records; Subsequently, his other texts were published, and they continue to be published to this day.

The name John was traditionally given in the Tolkien family to the eldest son of the eldest son. His mother named him Ronald instead of Rosalind (she thought it would be a girl). His close relatives usually called him Ronald, and his friends and colleagues called him John or John Ronald. Ruel is the surname of a friend of Tolkien's grandfather. This name was borne by Tolkien's father, Tolkien's brother, Tolkien himself, as well as all his children and grandchildren. Tolkien himself noted that this name appears in Old Testament(in Russian tradition - Raguel). Tolkien was often referred to by his initials JRRT, especially in his later years. He liked to sign with a monogram of these four letters.

1891 March Mabel Suffield, Tolkien's future mother, sails from England to South Africa. On April 16, Mabel Suffield and Arthur Tolkien get married in Cape Town. They go to live in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Boer Orange Republic (now part of South Africa).

1894 17 February Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, second son of Mabel and Arthur, is born in Bloemfontein.

1896 February 15 In Africa, Arthur Tolkien unexpectedly dies of illness. Mabel Tolkien and her children remain to live with their parents. In the summer, Mabel Tolkien and her children rent an apartment and live separately with the children.

1900 spring Mabel Tolkien moves into Catholic faith(along with the children), as a result of which he quarrels with most of his relatives. In the fall, Tolkien goes to school.

1902 Father Francis Xavier Morgan, Tolkien's future guardian, becomes Mabel Tolkien's confessor.

1904 November 14 Mabel Tolkien dies of diabetes, father Francis, in her will, becomes the guardian of her children.

1908 Tolkien, sixteen, meets nineteen-year-old Edith Bratt, his future wife.

1909 Having learned about Tolkien's novel, Father Francis forbids him to communicate with Edith until he comes of age (twenty-one years old).

Tolkien achieves considerable success in the school rugby team.

1913 January 3 Tolkien comes of age and proposes to Edith Bratt. Edith breaks off her engagement to someone else and accepts Tolkien's proposal.

1914 January 8 Edith Bratt converts to the Catholic faith for Tolkien's sake. Soon the engagement takes place. On September 24, Tolkien writes the poem “The Voyage of Eärendel,” which is considered the beginning of the mythology, the development of which he subsequently devoted his whole life to.

1915 July Tolkien receives a bachelor's degree at Oxford and joins the army as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers.

1916 Tolkien studies to become a signalman. He is appointed battalion signalman. On March 22, Tolkien and Edith Bratt are married in Warwick.

On June 4, Tolkien leaves for London and from there to the war in France. On July 15, Tolkien (as a signalman) takes part in battle for the first time. On October 27, Tolkien falls ill with “trench fever” and is returned to England. He himself never fought again.

1917 January-February Tolkien, recovering, begins to write “The Book of Lost Tales” - the future “Silmarillion”. November 16 Tolkien's eldest son, John Francis Ruel, is born.

1920 autumn Tolkien receives a position as a lecturer in English at the University of Leeds and moves to Leeds. In October, Tolkien's second son, Michael Hilary Ruel, is born.

1924 Tolkien becomes Professor of English at Leeds. November 21 Tolkien's third and youngest son, Christopher John Ruel, is born.

1925 Tolkien is elected professor of Old English at Oxford and moves there with his family early next year.

1926 Tolkien meets and becomes friends with Clive Lewis (future famous writer).

1929 end of the year Tolkien's only daughter, Priscilla Mary Ruel, is born.

1930-33 Tolkien writes The Hobbit.

In the early 30s. An informal literary club, the Inklings, gathers around Lewis, which includes Tolkien and other people who later became famous writers.

1936 The Hobbit is accepted for publication.

1937 On September 21, The Hobbit is published by Allen & Unwin. The book is a success and publishers are asking for a sequel. Tolkien offers them The Silmarillion, but the publishers want a book about hobbits. By December 19, Tolkien is writing the first chapter of the sequel to The Hobbit - the future Lord of the Rings.

1949 autumn Tolkien finishes the main text of The Lord of the Rings. He does not want to give it to the Allen & Unwin publishing house, since they refused to print The Silmarillion, and in 1950-52 he tries to give The Lord of the Rings along with The Silmarillion to the Collins publishing house, which initially shows interest.

1952 Collins refuses to publish The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien agrees to give it to Allen & Unwin.

1954 July 29 The first volume of The Lord of the Rings is published in England. November 11 The second volume of The Lord of the Rings is published in England. Tolkien is urgently required to complete the appendices, which should be published in the third volume.

1955 October 20 In England, the third volume of The Lord of the Rings is published with appendices, but without an alphabetical index.

1959 summer Tolkien retires.

British writer, outstanding linguist and founder of the literary genre of fantasy. He wrote the famous novels about Middle-earth: “The Lord of the Rings”, “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again” and “The Silmarillion”. He became a pioneer in creating fairy tales for adults.

Biography

Tolkien successfully taught Anglo-Saxon and English language and literature at Oxford University. He was a member of the Inklings society, which included his good friend Clive Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia. In 1927, Tolkien was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Based on his father's notes and manuscripts, Christopher Tolkien, the son of the famous storyteller, organized the publication of the so-called legendarium - all the additional stories, legends, history, explanations and actual linguistic works related to the fictional world of Arda. The most popular of Tolkien's unpublished works was The Silmarillion. This happened after the death of the author himself.

Although Tolkien was not the first to become interested in the fantasy genre, the completeness of his works, the perfection of his plan, and the thoughtfulness of his picture of the world make him worthy of the title of the founder of fantasy literature.

Family Tolkien

Most biographers agree that the Tolkiens are descended from Saxon craftsmen. In the 17th century, the ancestors of John Tolkien's father settled in England. The writer's surname comes from the word "Tollkiehn", which can be translated as "brave". According to John Ronald's grandmother, their ancestors even included the Hohenzollerns themselves.

Mabel Suffield, who was destined to become the mother of the great author, was a native Englishwoman. Her parents lived in Birmingham and were quite successful businessmen. Their store in the city center brought in a consistently good income.

Childhood

On January 3, 1892, John Tolkien was born in South Africa. At this time, his parents lived in the city of Bloemfontein, where Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1870-1904) held the position of bank manager. Two years later, a second child appeared in the Tolkien family - Hilary Arthur Ruel.

The terrible heat was a difficult test for young children, and the local nature turned out to be even more dangerous. Lions and snakes were part of the daily life of the British family. A tarantula bite caused a serious illness for young John. To your recovery future writer was indebted to physician Thornton Quimby. According to critics, it was his image that the writer took as a basis when creating the Lord of the Rings character Gandalf the Grey.

In 1994, the parents took the children back to the UK. In February 1996, Arthur Tolkien passed away. He was tormented by rheumatic fever and, as a result of bleeding, the head of the Tolkien family left the world, leaving his wife and two sons with virtually no means of subsistence.

Mabel was forced to ask for help from her family, which was not easy for her - her relatives did not approve of her marriage. The Tolkiens settled near Birmingham, in Sayrehole. The children really liked the village. The magnificent nature, hills and old trees made this place a paradise for boys to play. The family's income was more than modest; they had difficulty making ends meet. Being in a difficult situation, the mother of two boys found solace in religion, becoming a Catholic. This decision caused a break with relatives who adhered to the Anglican religion. Thanks to their mother, the children also had strong religious beliefs. John Tolkien was a committed Catholic until the end of his days. Under the influence of the writer, Clive Lewis also converted to Christianity, but he found the order of the Anglican Church closer.

Despite financial difficulties, Mabel's sons received a good education. Their mother did a lot of raising them. By the age of four, John Ruel could read. This skill opened up the world of literature for the boy and marked the beginning of the formation of literary tastes. The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm were not interesting to him, and he did not like “Treasure Island,” but he enjoyed rereading “Alice in Wonderland” by Carroll, “The Book of Fairies” by Lang and all sorts of stories about Indians. In addition to reading, Tolkien was interested in botany and drawing - he was especially good at landscapes. As a child, John learned the basics of Latin and Greek, which became the first stone in building the incredibly broad linguistic knowledge of the future university professor. In 1900, John became a student at King Edward's School, where his linguistic talent was appreciated. He studies Old English, Old Norse, Gothic, Welsh and Finnish.

John Ronald's mother was only 34 years old when diabetes took her life. In 1904 the children left Sayrehole, returning to Birmingham. A church minister and distant relative, Father Francis, took care of them. Deprived of the open spaces of Sayrehole, longing for his mother, John Ronald completely immerses himself in books and painting. He amazes teachers with his erudition, showing a deep interest in medieval literature. Takes up the task of studying the Old Icelandic language on his own.

The writer's close school friends were Geoffrey Smith, Christopher Wiseman and Rob Gilson. Friends will remain dear to John even after graduation. When Tolkien was fifteen years old, he and his cousin Mary invented a new language, the so-called Nevbosh. Later, fictitious languages ​​will become business card his works, and thousands of people will strive to learn Tolkien's Elvish speech.

Youth

Together with twelve friends in 1911, Tolkien traveled to Switzerland. From a letter written by John in 1968, it is known that it was to this trip that the world owes the birth of the story of fabulous journey Bilbo Baggins in the Misty Mountains.

In October 1911, Tolkien entered Exeter College, Oxford, on his second attempt.

John Ronald met his first love in 1908. Her name was Edith Mary Brett, the girl was three years older than John. Father Francis spoke out categorically against the young man’s hobby, because it was because of love fever that Tolkien failed to enter college on his first try. Her Protestant religion also did not work in Edith’s favor. The guardian made John promise that he would not date this girl until he turned 21. The writer agreed with the demands of Father Francis and did not maintain contact with Edith until he came of age.

At the university, Tolkien, following the advice of Professor Joe Wright, began studying the Celtic language. He also deepens his knowledge of Finnish linguistics.

Maturity

On his 21st birthday, John wrote a letter to Edith. In it, he invited the girl to become his wife. But by this time Edith was already engaged to another young man, believing that the long separation had caused John Ronald to forget about her. Having broken off the engagement, she agreed to Tolkien's proposal. Respecting the religious beliefs of the groom, Edith even converted to the Catholic faith. In 1913, John and Edith became officially engaged in Birmingham.

Upon learning that Britain was entering the war, Tolkien became an apprentice in the Military Training Corps in 1914, buying him time to graduate from university. Having graduated with honors, in 1915 John Ronald joined the Lancashire Fusiliers with the rank of sub-lieutenant. The writer also completed an 11-month training program in Staffordshire - in the 13th battalion.

On March 22, 1916, the long-awaited wedding of John and Edith took place. They got married at St Mary's Church in Warwick. The newlyweds were destined for more than 55 years of happiness. life together, and these years were full of mutual understanding. From their union three sons and a daughter, Priscilla, were born.

Already in July, Tolkien left his young wife and went to the front. The 11th Battalion of the British Expeditionary Forces, in which Tolkien served, was sent to France. The future writer recalled this journey with shudder for many years to come. Despite the secrecy of his movements, John managed to inform his wife about his location, thanks to the secret code he invented.

On November 16, 1917, John Ronald became the father of a boy who was named John Francis Ruel.

War in Tolkien's life

The war turned out to be worse than expected. During the Battle of the Somme, two of John's old friends, Smith and Gilson, were killed. All the horrors he saw made Tolkien a convinced pacifist. At the same time, he gained great respect for his brothers in arms, amazed at the courage of which ordinary people are capable. Although Tolkien escaped death, he fell victim to another scourge of war - typhus. The disease was very difficult and twice his comrades no longer expected to see John Ronald alive, but he was able to overcome the disease, although he became disabled.

On November 8, 1916, Tolkien went home. The author's health status required close attention for a long time. He returned to Birmingham, where Edith cared for her slowly recovering husband. There he worked on the sketches from which The Silmarillion was later compiled. When the illness subsided, Tolkien returned to the military camp, where he soon received the rank of lieutenant.

Career

In 1918, the Tolkien family moved to Oxford, where John Ronald accepted Active participation in the creation of a Universal Dictionary of the New English Language. In 1922, the writer was offered a professorship at Oxford University. Tolkien taught Anglo-Saxon language and literature. The fame of the brilliant young professor quickly spread throughout the scientific world.

In 1937, thanks to Stanley Unwin, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, written by Tolkien for his four children, was published. The author was awarded the New York Herald Tribune Prize. Unprecedented sales made The Hobbit a bestseller. The tale was a resounding success, and Sir Anwyn noted that a sequel should be written. No one expected that Tolkien would take work on the second work in the Middle-earth series so seriously. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was released only in 1954 and within a matter of days gained popularity among British readers. Although Anuin liked Tolkien's work, he did not think that the novel was destined for such success. The book was divided into three parts to make the publishers' work easier.

Who was Tolkien

Formally, the biography of an academic scientist seems sparse in external events. From childhood he began to be interested in Germanic mythology and linguistics, at the age of 14 he became interested in inventing his own languages, and five years later, in 1911, he entered Exeter College at Oxford University. With short breaks during the First World War Tolkien took part in the famous Battle of the Somme in July 1916. and teaching at the University of Leeds in 1920-1925 Tolkien worked at Oxford all his life as professor of Anglo-Saxon literature: first at Pembroke College, then at Merton.

Tolkien began working on poems and tales of a fictional world - the future "Silmarillion" - in the mid-1910s, and in the mid-1930s he became a member of the informal literary circle "Inklings", participants Clive Staples Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and others. whom we met to read aloud to each other and discuss our own texts Tolkien described these meetings in his unfinished novel, The Notion Club Papers.. These meetings, as well as the support of his close friend C.S. Lewis, help Tolkien take his literary experiments more seriously.

From 1959 until his death in 1973, Tolkien devoted himself entirely to stories about Middle-earth, most of which would be published after the writer's death by his son.

Where it all began: the creation of new languages

Tolkien was a linguist and specialized in Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon (Old English) languages. His first serious academic work was preparing dictionary entries on several words starting with the letter W Many years later, in 1969, Tolkien again took part in the work on the Oxford Dictionary, but in a completely different capacity. The editor of the new volume of supplements asked him to edit the article on the word hobbit, which Tolkien eventually completely rewrote. Since then, the dictionary has included many words describing the realities of Middle-earth, including mathom, orc, mithril, balrog., for the Oxford English Dictionary. Tolkien also compiled a Dictionary of Middle English and taught Old Icelandic, Gothic, and Middle Welsh Tolkien's most notable academic achievements include the publication of the Middle English works Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Recluse's Guide, the modern English translation of Sir Gawain and the Pearl and Sir Orfeo, and the lecture Beowulf. monsters and critics”, changing the attitude towards this Old English poem.. But his main passion was the creation of his own languages, the inspiration and basis for which were real languages. He began composing them while still in school, and already in his student years he began to write his first poetic works on them. Tolkien created two Elvish languages ​​- Quenya based on Finnish (a kind of La-tyn) and Sindarin based on Welsh. The most famous text in Quenya is "Namárië", or "Lament of Galadriel", and in Sindarin - "A Elbereth Gilthoniel", a hymn to Varda, the deity of light:

Namarië

Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yeni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lissë-miruvóreva
Andúne pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen.

Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?

An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë
ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë
ar sindanóriello caita mornië
i falmalinnar imbe met,
ar hísië untúpa ​​Calaciryo míri oialë.
Sí vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar!
Namarië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar!
Nai elyë hiruva! Namarië!

Galadriel's Lament

Oh! Leaves fall like gold in the wind! Long years are countless, like the wings of trees, long years pass like quick sips of sweet honey in the high halls of the far West under the blue arches of Varda, where the stars tremble with the song that her royal voice sings. Who will fill the cup for me today? Varda, the Queen of the Stars from the eternally white mountain raises her hands above the world, like clouds. And the paths of the world are drowning in the shadows, and the fog from the gray country lay on the foamy waves between us, hiding the fog forever Kalakiria stones. Now for those who mourn in the East, Valimar has disappeared! Goodbye! Maybe you will still find Valimar. Maybe you will be the one to find Valimar. Goodbye!

Translation by I. Grinshpun

A Elbereth Gilthoniel

A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
silivren penna miriel
o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-díriel
o galadhremmin ennorath,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, sí nef aearon!

A Elbereth Gilthoniel
o menel palan-diriel,
le nallon sí di-nguruthos!
A tiro nin, Fanuilos!

About Varda

[The lightning of the all-night dawn
Beyond the distant seas,
Burn with eternal hope
Over our mountains!]

O Elbereth! Giltoniel!
The light of hope is far away!
From our shadowy lands
I bow to you deeply!

I overcame that evil darkness
On a black sky
And lit the clear stars
In your night crown.

Giltoniel! O Elbereth!
Shine in the blue temple!
We remember your eternal light
Beyond the distant seas!

Translation by A. Kistyakovsky

While creating new languages, Tolkien thought about what kind of world they would be spoken in. As Lewis wrote of him, “he had been inside language, and his invention was not complete until he realized that every language implies its own mythology.” Quote from an obituary published in the Times on September 3, 1973. Its author is C.S. Lewis, who died 10 years earlier (the text was sent to the newspaper in advance and was kept in the editorial office). It is noteworthy that Tolkien himself refused the request to write an obituary for Lewis.. The author of The Lord of the Rings called his text an “essay on linguistic aesthetics”:

“[My work] is a unified whole and is fundamentally inspired by linguistics. It is based on the invention of languages. It is more likely that “stories” were composed in order to create a world for languages, rather than vice versa. In my case, the name comes first, and then the story. I would actually prefer to write in Elvish." J. R. R. Letters. M., 2004..

The remaining languages ​​that are mentioned in Tolkien's books are not completely invented, like the languages ​​of the Elves, but are incredibly carefully thought out and “translated” by the author. The world of Middle-earth is not the European Middle Ages, which means its inhabitants cannot speak English. Modern English in the trilogy conveys Westron, the universal dialect of Middle-earth, and related human languages Adunaic language, Rohirrik, Talisca.. Moreover, the translation reproduces the degree of relationship between these languages: the Rohirrim language is translated into Old English, because it relates to Westron in the same way as Old English relates to modern English; Dale's language, in which dwarves communicate with other creatures, is translated into Old Icelandic, because it is to Westron as Icelandic is to modern English. And so on. We don't know exactly what a real Westron sounds like, but we do know that "hobbit" will be "kuduk" and Frodo Baggins' name is actually Maura Labingi. Only languages ​​of non-human peoples - elves, gnomes - that are not related to Westron are not translated. Khuzdul., Ents and Orcs.

How Tolkien invented English mythology

The complexity of the game that Tolkien played with himself, constructing a mythological reality based on linguistic reality, is visible in the details. As linguist Tom Shippey, author of one of the best books on Tolkien, notes, although the language of the Riders of Rohan In some Russian translations, Rohan is called Ristania or Mustangrim.- one of the peoples inhabiting the pages of The Lord of the Rings - is transmitted to Old English, the names of their ancient rulers are Gothic. Thus, Tolkien hints that the ancestors of the horsemen spoke a different language and lived in a different era than their descendants. There are many such allusions: the language of the Rohans is conveyed by the Mercian dialect of Old English, their songs are reminiscent of Old English lamentations, the emblem of the Land of Horsemen (a white horse on a green background) refers to the Uffington white horse on the hills of ancient Mercia, and numerous hidden quotes from the poem “ Beowulf" Anglo-Saxon epic poem set in Jutland, before the migration of the Angles to Britain.- to the Anglo-Saxons. Finally, the self-name of Rohan - Mark - sounds exactly the same as the name of Mercia should have sounded in the local dialect. Thus, the horsemen of Rohan are not a fictional barbarian people, but a unique reconstruction of the heroic myth of the Anglo-Saxons. This is how they would have been if they had stood up to the Norman Conquest.

Uffington horse. Chalk figure. Around the 10th century BC. e. Wikimedia Commons

Flag of Rohan. Souvenir based on the film trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”© New Line Cinema

Ardently loving the language and nature of England, Tolkien believed that the English were offended by the lack of mythology in any way comparable with neighboring peoples: “From a very young age, I was saddened by the poverty of my beloved homeland, it does not have its own legends (associated with its language and soil), at least of the quality that I was looking for and found (as a component) in the legends of other lands. There are Greek and Celtic epics, Romanesque, Germanic, Scandinavian and Finnish (the latter made a strong impression on me); but absolutely nothing English, except for cheap editions of folk tales.” J. R. R. Letters. M., 2004..

The Arthurian myth, to which Tolkien paid tribute (in the 1930s he wrote drafts of a poem about Arthur, trying to connect these tales with his mythology), was not English enough for him: tales about the military leader that arose on Celtic soil -Nike, who successfully fought with the ancestors of the English, known mostly in the French retelling, are hardly suitable for the role of the English national myth.

How The Silmarillion Was Made

“The Silmarillion” is an early, but never published during the writer’s lifetime, collection of tales about the creation of the world, the awakening of elves and people, and the struggle for the wondrous stones of the Silmaril. Tolkien himself did not consider his work to be fiction and preferred to talk about it in terms of discovering something hidden rather than inventing something new. He began to create his own mythology after seeing the following words in the text of the Old English poem "Christ", written around the 9th century by the Anglo-Saxon poet Cunewulf:

éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sent “Rejoice, earendel, the brightest of the angels, sent [to shine] to people above the middle of the earth.”.

The word "äärendel", from Cynewulf meaning a shining ray and apparently referring to the morning star Venus For other authors, this is a symbol of John the Baptist, preceding the appearance of Christ, just as Venus precedes the rising of the Sun., struck Tolkien with its beauty. In the early poems, written first in English and then in Elvish, the image of Earendil appears, a wonderful sailor whose ship moves among the stars and gives hope to people. This image became one of the lyrical cores of Tolkien’s mythology. The hero, in whose veins flows the blood of elves and people, turned out to be the link between the peoples inhabiting Middle-earth and the main plots of Tolkien's legend-rium This word, which in medieval Latin denoted a collection of biographies of saints, was used by Tolkien to describe the body of his tales.- about the marvelous stones Silmarils, created by the elves at the dawn of time The stones were created to preserve the light of the wonderful Primordial Trees, which were destroyed by the embodiment of evil Melkor. But Melkor steals the Silmarils and hides from Vali-no-ra, the land of the gods, to Middle-earth. The creators of the Silmarils, vowing revenge on anyone who encroaches on their creation, also leave Valinor. The hero Beren, who stole the stone from Melkor's crown, bequeaths it to his descendants. Elwing, his granddaughter, miraculously carries the stone onto the ship to her husband, Earen-dil. He asks the Valar to help the exiled elves in the battle with Melkor. Melkor is defeated, the other two stones are destroyed due to the greed of their creators, and the third remains to shine on the mast of the ship of Eärendil, ranked among the gods., about the love of the man Beren and the Elven princess Luthien For the sake of his beloved, Beren did the impossible and obtained the Silmarils from the crown of Melkor. Luthien sacrifices his immortality for the sake of love for Beren, and he, who died in the fight against monsters, turns out to be the only person who returned from death to life. The story of Beren and Lúthien partly reproduces the love story of Tolkien and his wife Edith. On their tombstone he bequeathed to write: “Edith Mary Tolkien - Luthien” and “John Ronald Ruel Tolkien - Beren.”, about Eärendil, his wife Elwing and their son Elrond Children of an elf and a man, they are a symbol of the union of elves and people. Elrond will play an important role in the war described in The Lord of the Rings, and his daughter Arwen will enter into the third and last marriage in the history of Middle-earth with a mortal, Aragorn, one of the main characters of the book..

How did The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings come about?

Like The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings arose thanks to the word. According to Tolkien, one day, while checking student essays, he accidentally wrote on the one he came across. clean slate: “In a hole under the mountain there lived a hobbit.” The word “hobbit” was unknown to Tolkien, and the desire to find out what it meant became the driving force of the plot.

Tolkien did not even consider The Hobbit to be of interest from a publishing point of view. He was convinced of this by Lewis and the son of the head of the publishing house Allen & Unwin, Rainer Unwin, to whom his father gave the manuscript to read. The book turned out to be extremely successful, and the publishers turned to Tolkien with a request for a sequel. The world briefly described in The Hobbit acquired more and more distinct features of the world that Tolkien created from his youth, and a children's fairy tale with a simple plot turned out to be key episode, preceding the largest war of good and evil forces in the history of Middle-earth.

The secret of the special reality of the world of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” is that the reader clearly feels: the piece that he is given to see is part of a much larger whole, which he is told about in half a hint or not told at all. As Lewis wrote in his review of the first edition of The Hobbit, "Professor Tolkien obviously knows much more about his creatures than is necessary for this tale."

Is there European history hidden in The Lord of the Rings?

In the epic clash of the free peoples of Middle-earth with the forces of darkness described in the pages of The Lord of the Rings, they often see an allegory of the Second World War, or even cold war- after all, darkness in Tolkien comes from the east, and not from the west, as in classical myths. Tolkien himself persistently rejected such interpretations. “My story does not contain symbolism or conscious allegory,” he writes to one of his correspondents. — Algories like “five magicians = five senses” are absolutely alien to my way of thinking. There were five magicians, and this is simply a specific component of history. Asking whether it is true that orcs are “really” communists, to me, is no more reasonable than asking whether communists are orcs.” J. R. R. Tolkien. Letters. M., 2004.. There is a well-known anecdote that during one of his lectures at Oxford, Tolkien was once again asked whether by “darkness from the east” he meant the USSR. The professor replied: “No, what do you mean, what do the communists have to do with it? Of course I meant Cambridge." The rivalry between England's two main universities is a traditional joke..

If you look for historical allusions in the text, then the war for the ring resembles another great war, preserved in European cultural memory, namely the confrontation of the Western Roman Empire with the Huns in the 5th century. The Battle of the Pelennor Fields on March 15, 3019 of the Third Age is in many ways reminiscent of the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields on July 15, 451, which united the Romans and Visigoths under the leadership of Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric, against the Huns and Ostrogoths under the leadership of Attila. “The last of the Romans” Aetius, who spent many years among the barbarians, resembles Aragorn, “the last of the Numenoreans”, who spent many years wandering, and the death of the elderly Visigoth king Theodoric, who fell from his horse, is the death of an elderly man crushed by a horse king Supreme ruler. Rohans of Theoden.

Where did the dragon, ring and other important details come from?

The main plots and minor details of the world invented by Tolkien are taken from German-Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon legends. The plot of the theft of the cup, which awakens the dragon from a long hibernation, is taken from the second part of Beowulf and turns out to be the main one not only in The Hobbit, but also in The Lord of the Rings - only in the role of the kidnapper, whose greed turns into a huge war , Tolkien has first Gollum, who found and appropriated the ring, and then Bilbo, who also took possession of it in a not entirely honest manner.

The plot of a treasure that brings a curse on its owner, which can be gotten rid of only by destroying it forever, is typical of many examples of ancient Germanic epic. Both the “Saga of the Volsungs”, and the “Elder”, and the “Younger Edda” tell how Loki, traveling with Odin and Hoenir, killed an otter with a stone, which caught a fish and ate it, dragging it ashore. It turned out that one of the three sons of the wizard Hreidmar took the form of an otter. Hreidmar and his sons, one of whom was named Fafnir, bound the gods, demanding a ransom in exchange for freedom. Loki, having caught the dwarf Andvari in the water, took his gold from him, and along with the gold, a magic ring capable of increasing wealth. Angry Andvari placed a curse on the ring, according to which it would destroy all its owners. Hreidmar and his sons receive the gold, but at night Fafnir kills his father and, turning into a dragon, remains to guard the cursed treasure.

Bilbo's conversation with the dragon Smaug is reminiscent of the conversation between Siegfried (or Si-gurd), the main hero-serpent fighter of northern myths, with Fafnir, who has taken the form of a dragon: the hero refuses to give his name and speaks to the monster in riddles. And even the murder of Smaug, thanks to the clue about the unprotected belly, is similar to how Siegfried deals with Fafnir.

The motive for the destruction of the cursed treasure can be found in the finale of the poem "Beowulf", where the treasure of the defeated dragon is buried in a mound along with Beo-wulf, or in the "Song of the Nibelungs", where the cursed gold of the Nibe-lungs is forever buried at the bottom of the Rhine.

From the "Divination of the Völva", one of the most famous songs“Elder Edda”, the names of the dwarves in “The Hobbit” and Gandalf are taken. Many place names are borrowed from there, for example Mirkwood or the Misty Mountains.

The story of the sword Narsil, with a fragment of which Isildur defeats Sauron in the last battle of the Second Age, after which the sword is reforged and given to Aragorn, is reminiscent of the story of Gram, the sword of Siegfried-Sigurd. In addition, the hero hits the dragon with a fragment of his sword in the finale of Beowulf.

Finally, the ring is an important attribute and symbol of power in Scandinavian and Germanic mythology. In Beowulf, one of the epithets of a ruler is “ring-giver,” because granting a ring to a vassal meant granting power over a particular territory. The fact that rings are the magical center of power for Tolkien also testifies to the influence of the German epic tradition on the author.

How texts about Middle-earth relate to religion

Tolkien was a deeply religious person, and creativity, as well as mythological creativity, was for him participation in the divine act of creation of the world. At the same time, Middle-earth is striking in the absence of mentions of God and any manifestations of religion. Tolkien deliberately reverses the traditional orientation of good and evil to the cardinal points, placing Valinor, the land of gods and immortals, in the west, and the stronghold of evil forces, Mordor, in the east.

But there is no contradiction in this. “The Lord of the Rings,” as conceived by Tolkien, is certainly a religious and even Catholic work, but it is such not because the heroes know the catechism and perform rituals correctly, but because worship and Christian ethics are woven into its spirit, plot and symbolism.

Evil is stripped creative potential and can only pervert the good. Melkor, the evil spirit antagonist of The Silmarillion, perverted the original melody of creation, causing the first angels to fall away from the creator, and then created the orcs, perverting the nature of the elves. No one in Middle-earth is good or evil by nature: the most important scene of the entire trilogy is the tenderness of Gollum, one of the most hopeless villains of the book, at the sight of the sleeping Frodo, rudely and cruelly interrupted by Sam, one of the most good heroes. The main ethical message of the trilogy is that the most powerful strongholds of evil are defeated not by the strength and greatness of virtue, but by humility and sacrificial love, deeply Christian in its essence. God is present in Middle-earth invisibly, but persistently in the form of Providence, of which all the heroes turn out to be assistants or involuntary instruments. This is especially evident in the scene on Mount Doom, when it turns out that without Gollum the ring would have been impossible to destroy Frodo's finger bitten off by Gollum is an allusion to the gospel: “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your members should perish, and not that your whole body should be cast into hell” (Matthew 5 :thirty).

Who are elves

Of all the creatures inhabiting Tolkien's legendarium, only elves and hobbits are Tolkien's original inventions. Hobbits are a people completely invented by Tolkien, who have no parallels in mythology or folklore. The elves of German mythology and English folklore, a ghostly fairy people akin to fairies, have almost nothing in common with the people of immortal artists and musicians in Tolkien. Dwarves, goblins, trolls are familiar characters in German mythology. Ents come from Welsh legends about the battle of the trees. Orcs, although the word is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon texts, were invented by Tolkien as anthropomorphic creatures, but not described in as much detail as elves and hobbits.. It was they who unbalanced his imagination and became the impetus for the creation of two main works - The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien himself believed main feature The Silmarillion lacks anthropocentrism. These tales are written from the point of view of the elves. The determination with which Tolkien reinterprets the elves of the German-Scandinavian tradition and places them at the center of his universe suggests that this image was very important to him. These immortal creatures became, according to Tolkien, the first creation of God. In the elves, Tolkien expressed two motives that deeply worried him - a love of creativity and a love of nature. Several of the writer’s “favorite trees” are still known in Oxford..

Unlike people, whose purpose of existence, according to Tolkien and the Catechism, lies outside the material world, elves exist as long as this world exists, and even if killed, they can return to life. They are the spirit of this world, their main gift and their main temptation, as is clear from the history of the Silmarils - creativity, in which they know no equal and are able to compete with the gods.

The immortality of the elves in Tolkien is not the carefree eternity of the ancient gods. It is imbued with a pessimism very characteristic of the writer: it is an attempt to describe human mortality from the opposite. The mortal nature of the people of Middle-earth is not doom, but a gift that makes them “free from the circles of the world,” allowing them to be involved in the Creator’s plan for the future that will come after the end of the physical world. For the elves, this gift of people is a source of sadness and an object of envy. Just as people tell each other fairy tales, the heroes of which manage to escape from death, so elves tell each other fairy tales, the heroes of which manage to escape from immortality. In particular, the already mentioned stories of the elven princesses Luthien and Arwen turn out to be such a tale of escape..

In Tolkien's stories about elves, the motif of weariness from life, bright and wise sadness is very noticeable. The best examples of elven poetry are full of this sadness; it permeates the last pages of The Lord of the Rings, dedicated to seeing off the heroes to the west, to the borders of the immortals. Perhaps the originality of Tolkien's mythology lies precisely in the interpretation of immortality. Unlike the classical myths that arose at the beginning of human history, this is the experience of a 20th century man who knows that history can be not only a fascinating tale, but also a heavy burden.

How Tolkien was translated into Russian

Tolkien's books are difficult to convey in another language. But the writer himself was happy with the new translations (but was hostile to the film adaptations) and helped the translators as best he could, explaining the opaque etymologies of names and titles. The history of Tolkien's translations into Russian began quite late, but it developed quite happily. The first translation was “The Hobbit” by Natalia Rakhmanova, published in 1976. The prototype of the hobbit for the illustrator of the first Russian edition, Mikhail Belomlinsky, was the actor Yevgeny Leonov. Later Leonov was happy with this choice and even read excerpt from a book on camera. This translation is still considered one of the most literary, although more than a dozen have been published.

Translations and retellings of The Lord of the Rings have existed since the 1960s in self-publishing, and the first official edition, translated by Vladimir Muravyov and Andrei Kistyakovsky, was published only in 1989 An abridged edition was published in 1982.. Since then, a dozen more translations have been published, and debate about which one is better continues to this day. The main subject of discussion is the translation of names and titles. Since in Tolkien they always involve a language game, translators find it difficult to resist: Frodo Baggins becomes Baggins or Sumniks, Rivendell becomes Rivendell, and Rohan becomes Ristania.

It is difficult to say to what extent Tolkien succeeded in creating a “mythology for England.” The Silmarillion and other tales of his legendarium are hardly perceived as something exclusively Anglo-Saxon It is known that a reviewer, who was shown some materials from the Sil-marillion by the publisher Allen & Unwin in 1937, saw in them “something of that crazy, bright-eyed beauty that so confuses the Anglo-Saxons when they encounter Celtic art.". One way or another, these tales became over time almost more popular than the German-Scandinavian mythology that gave birth to them. Being, like Alice in Wonderland, created on specifically English material, they became the property of world culture - not mythology for England, but mythology for the whole world.

Chi-tai-the same ma-teri-ala Nikolay Ep-ple about that, and.

Sources

• Carpenter H. John R.R. Tolkien. Biography.
• Tolkien J.R.R. Letters.
• Shippy T.A. Road to Middle-earth.
• The Complete History of Middle-Earth. Books I–XII. Ed. by Christopher Tolkien.