Dzhon Ronald Ruel Tolkin

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, philologist, linguist, literary scholar, and medievalist.

He was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now Free State, South Africa). His parents, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, a manager at an English bank, and Mabel Tolkien (Suffield), had come to South Africa shortly before their son’s birth because of Arthur’s promotion. On 17 February 1894 Arthur and Mabel had a second son, Hilary Arthur Reuel.

As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a tarantula, and this event later influenced his work. The sick boy was cared for by a doctor named Thornton Quimby, who is believed to have served as the prototype for Gandalf the Grey.

In early 1895, after the death of the head of the family, the Tolkiens returned to England. Left alone with two children, Mabel asked relatives for help. The return home was difficult: Tolkien’s mother’s relatives disapproved of her marriage. After the father’s death from rheumatic fever, the family settled in Sarehole, near Birmingham.

Seeking support in life, Mabel immersed herself in religion, converted to Catholicism (which led to a final break with her Anglican relatives), and gave her children an appropriate education; as a result, Tolkien remained a deeply religious person throughout his life.

Mabel also taught her son the basics of Latin and instilled in him a love of botany, and from an early age Tolkien liked to draw landscapes and trees. He read a great deal, and from the very beginning disliked Treasure Island and The Pied Piper of Hamelin, but he enjoyed Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Indian stories, George MacDonald’s fantasy works, and Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books. Tolkien’s mother died of diabetes in 1904 at the age of 34; before her death she entrusted the upbringing of the children to Father Francis Morgan, a priest of a Birmingham church and a strong, extraordinary personality. It was Francis Morgan who developed Tolkien’s interest in philology, for which he was later deeply grateful.

The children spent their preschool years in