J. R. R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

1910 January: Ronald and Hilary move to new lodgings. Ronald continues to see Edith Bratt, but is then forbidden to communicate with her. March: Edith leaves Birmingham and moves to Cheltenham. December: Ronald wins an Exhibition at Exeter College, Oxford.

  1911 Formation of ‘The T.C.B.S.’ Summer: Ronald leaves school. He visits Switzerland. Autumn: His first term at Oxford. Christmas: He takes part in a perfomance of The Rivals at King Edward’s.

  1913 January: Ronald’s twenty-first birthday. He is reunited with Edith Bratt. February: He takes Honour Moderations and is awarded a Second Class. Summer: He begins to read for the Honours School of English Language and Literature. He visits France with a Mexican family.

  1914 January: Edith is received into the Catholic Church. She and Ronald are formally betrothed. Summer: Ronald visits Cornwall. At the outbreak of war he determines to return to Oxford and complete his degree course.

  1915 Summer: He is awarded First Class Honours in his final examination. After being commissioned in the Lancashire Fusiliers he begins training in Bedford and in Staffordshire.

  1916 22 March: He and Edith are married. Edith moves to Great Haywood. June: Tolkien embarks for France. He travels to the Somme as a second lieutenant in the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, and serves in action as Battalion Signalling Officer until the autumn. November: He returns to England suffering from ‘trench fever’.

  1917 January and February: While convalescing at Great Haywood he begins to write ‘The Book of Lost Tales’ which eventually becomes The Silmarillion. Spring: He is posted to Yorkshire, but spends much of the year in hospital. November: Birth of eldest son, John.

  1918 Tolkien (now a full lieutenant) is posted to the Humber Garrison and to Staffordshire. In November, after the Armistice, be returns to Oxford with his family and joins the staff of the New English Dictionary.

  1919 He begins work as a freelance tutor. He and Edith move to 1 Alfred Street.

  1920 He is appointed Reader in English Language at Leeds University, and begins work there in the autumn. Birth of second son, Michael.

  1921 Edith and the family join him in Leeds, eventually moving into 11 St Mark’s Terrace.

  1922 E. V. Gordon joins the staff at Leeds. He and Tolkien begin work on their edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

  1924 Tolkien becomes Professor of English Language at Leeds University. He buys a house in Darnley Road. Birth of third son, Christopher.

  1925 The edition of Sir Gawain is published. In the summer Tolkien is elected Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and takes up the appointment in the autumn. He buys a house in Northmoor Road, and the family returns to Oxford early in the new year.

  1926 Tolkien becomes friends with C. S. Lewis. Formation of ‘The Coalbiters’.

  1929 Birth of daughter, Priscilla.

  1930 The family moves from 22 to 20 Northmoor Road. At about this time Tolkien begins to write The Hobbit. He abandons it before it is finished.

  1936 He lectures on Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics. The manuscript of The Hobbit is read by Susan Dagnall of Allen & Unwin, and at her suggestion Tolkien finishes the book. It is accepted for publication.

  1937 The Hobbit is published in the autumn. At the suggestion of Stanley Unwin, Tolkien begins to write a sequel, which becomes The Lord of the Rings.

  1939 Tolkien delivers his lecture On Fairy-Stories at St Andrews University. At the outbreak of war Charles Williams joins the Inklings.

  1945 Tolkien is elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford.

  1947 The Tolkiens move to Manor Road.

  1949 Completion of The Lord of the Rings. Publication of Farmer Giles of Ham.

  1950 Tolkien offers The Lord of the Rings to the publishing house of Collins. The family moves from Manor Road to Holywell Street.

  1952 The manuscript of The Lord of the Rings is returned by Collins, and Tolkien passes it to Allen & Unwin.

  1953 The Tolkiens move to Sandfield Road in the Oxford suburb of Headington.

  1954 Publication of the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings.

  1955 Publication of the third volume.

  1959 Tolkien retires from his professorship.

  1962 Publication of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

  1964 Publication of Tree and Leaf.

  1965 Ace Books issue an unauthorised American edition of The Lord of the Rings. A ‘campus cult’ begins.

  1967 Publication of Smith of Wootton Major.

  1968 The Tolkiens move to Lakeside Road, Poole (adjacent to the town of Bournemouth).

  1971 Edith Tolkien dies in November, aged eighty-two.

  1972 Tolkien returns to Oxford, moving into rooms in Merton Street. He is awarded the C.B.E., and Oxford University confers an honorary Doctorate of Letters upon him.

  1973 On 28 August he goes to Bournemouth to stay with friends. He is taken ill, and dies in a nursing-home in the early hours of Sunday 2 September, aged eighty-one.

  1977 Publication of The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien.

  APPENDIX C

  The published writings of J. R. R. Tolkien

  1911 Poem ‘The Battle of the Eastern Field’ in The King Edward’s School Chronicle, Birmingham, Vol. XXVI No. 186, March, pp. 22–6. Reprinted in Mallorn, No. 12, 1978, pp. 24–8. [Tolkien also contributed reports on meetings of the school debating society to the magazine, November 1910 to June 1911, and editorials to issues for June and July 1911.]

  1913 Poem ‘From the many-willow’d margin of the immemorial Thames’ (signed ‘J’) in The Stapeldon Magazine, Vol. IV No. 20, December, p. 11. (Published for Exeter College by B. H. Blackwell, Oxford.)

  1915 Poem ‘Goblin Feet’ in Oxford Poetry, 1915, edited by G. D. H. C[ole] and T. W. E[arp] (Oxford, B. H. Blackwell), pp. 64–5. Reprinted in Oxford Poetry, 1914–1916 (Oxford, B. H. Blackwell, 1917), pp. 120–1; The Book of Fairy Poetry, edited by Dora Owen (London, Longmans, Green, 1920), pp. 177–8; and in several other anthologies.

  1918 Introductory note (signed ‘J.R.R.T.’) in A Spring Harvest, poems by Geoffrey Bache Smith, late Lieutenant in Lancashire Fusiliers (London, Erskine Macdonald, 1918). [Tolkien and C. L. Wiseman edited this collection of Smith’s poetry and helped to arrange for its publication.]

  1920 Poem ‘The Happy Mariners’ (signed ‘J.R.R.T.’) in The Stapeldon Magazine, Vol. V No. 26, June,

  pp. 69–70. (Published for Exeter College by B. H. Blackwell, Oxford).

  1922 A Middle English Vocabulary (Oxford, Clarendon Press), [Designed for use with 1921 edition of Kenneth Sisam’s Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose, in subsequent editions of which it appears as glossary. It was also reprinted separately].

  Poem ‘The Clerke’s Compleinte’ in The Gryphon, New Series, Vol. IV No. 3, December, p. 95. (Signed ‘N.N.’)

  1923 Poem ‘Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden’ in The Gryphon, New Series, Vol. IV No. 4, January, p. 130 (Leeds University). Review headed ‘Holy Maidenhood’ Times Literary Supplement, London, 26 April 1923, p. 281. [A review of Furnivall’s E.E.T.S. edition of Hali Meidenhad. Unsigned but Tolkien’s authorship established by reference in his diary.]

  Poem, ‘The City of the Gods’ in The Microcosm, edited by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, Vol. VIII No. 1, spring, p. 8. (Issued privately in Leeds.)

  Obituary: ‘Henry Bradley, 3 Dec, 1845–23 May, 1923’ (signed J.R.R.T.), Bulletin of the Modern Humanities Research Association (London, Cambridge University Press), No. 20, October, pp. 4–5.

  Poems ‘The Eadigan Saelidan: The Happy Mariners’ (revised from version in The Stapeldon Magazine, 1920), ‘Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon’ and ‘Enigmala Saxonic-a Nuper Inventa Duo’ in A Northern Venture: verses by members of the Leeds University English School Association, pp. 15–20 (Leeds, Swan Press).

  Poem ‘The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery-Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked’ in Yorkshire Poetry, Vol. II No. 19, October-November, pp. 1–3 (Leeds, Swan Press). [An early version of p
oem in The Lord of the Rings, Book I Chapter 9, and in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil as ‘The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late’.]

  1924 Poems ‘An Evening in Tavrobel’ ‘The Lonely Isle’ and ‘The Princess Ni’ in Leeds University Verse 1914–24 (Leeds, Swan Press), pp. 56–8.

  Chapter on ‘Philology: General Works’ in The Year’s Work in English Studies, Vol. IV, 1923, pp. 20–37 (London, Oxford University Press).

  1925 ‘Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography’. The Review of English Studies, Vol. I No. 2, April,

  pp. 210–15 (London, Sidgwick & Jackson).

  Poem ‘Light as Leaf on Lindentree’ in The Gryphon, New Series, Vol. VI No. 6. June, p. 217 (Leeds University). [An early version of poem in The Lord of the Rings, Book I Chapter 11.

  Reprinted in The Lays of Beleriand, pp. 108–10, incorporated in ‘The Lay of the Children of Húrin’.]

  ‘The Devil’s Coach-Horses,’ The Review of English Studies, Vol. 1 No. 3, July, pp. 331–6 (London, Sidgwick & Jackson). Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, edited by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon (Oxford, Clarendon Press). Reprinted many times. Second edition, revised by Norman Davis, Oxford, 1967; issued as paperback, 1968.

  1926 Chapter on ‘Philology: General Works’ in The Year’s Work in English Studies, Vol. V, 1924, pp. 26–65 (London, Oxford University Press).

  1927 Poem ‘The Nameless Land’ in Realities: An Anthology of Verse, edited by G. S. Tancred, pp. 24–5 (Leeds, Swan Press; London, Gay & Hancock).

  Poems ‘Adventures in Unnatural History and Medieval Metres, being the Freaks of Fisiologus’ (signed ‘Fisiologus’) in The Stapeldon Magazine, Vol. VII No. 40, pp. 123–7 (published for Exeter College by B. H. Blackwell, Oxford).

  Chapter on ‘Philology: General Works’ in The Year’s Work in English Studies, Vol. VI, 1925, pp. 32–66 (London, Oxford University Press).

  1928 Foreword to A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District by Walter E. Haigh (London, Oxford University Press).

  1929 ‘Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiōhad’ Essays and Studies by members of the English Association, Vol. XIV,

  pp. 104–26 (Oxford, Clarendon Press).

  1930 ’The Oxford English School’ The Oxford Magazine, Vol. XLVIII No. 21, May, pp. 278–80, 782 (Oxford, Oxonian Press. [An article proposing a reformed syllabus.]

  1931 Poem ‘Progress in Bimble Town’ (signed ‘K. Bagpuize’) in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. L No. 1, October, p. 22 (Oxford, Oxonian Press).

  1932 Appendix I: ‘The Name “Nodens” ‘, Report on the Excavation of the Prehistoric, Roman, and Post-Roman Sites in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, Reports of Research Committee of Society of Antiquaries of London, No. IX (1932), pp. 132–7 (London, Oxford University Press).

  ‘Sigelwara Land’: Part I, Medium Aevum, 1 (December), pp. 183–96 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell).

  1933 Poem ‘Errantry’ in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LII No. 5, November, p. 180 (Oxford, Oxonian Press). [An early version of poem of the same title in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.]

  1934 Poem ‘Firiel’ in The Chronicle (Roehampton, Convent of Sacred Heart), Vol. IV, pp. 30–2. [An early version of ‘The Last Ship’ in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.]

  Poem ‘Looney’ in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LII No. 9, January, p. 340 (Oxford, Oxonian Press). [An early version of poem in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil as ‘The Sea-bell’.]

  Poem ‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil’ in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LII No. 13, February, pp. 4645 (Oxford, Oxonian Press). [An early version of poem of same title in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.]

  ‘Sigelwara Land’: Part II, Medium Aevum, 3 (June), pp. 95–111 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell).

  ‘Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale’ Transactions of the Philological Society (1934), pp. 1–70 (London, David Nutt).

  1936 Songs for the Philologists, J. R. R. Tolkien, E. V. Gordon and others (privately printed in Department of English, University College, London). [A collection of humorous verses originally circulated in typescript at Leeds University. Verses are unsigned but Tolkien was author of ‘From One to Five’ ‘Syx Mynet’ ‘Ruddoc Hana’ ‘Ides Ælfscyne’ ‘Bagme Bloma’ ‘Eadig Beo pu’ ‘Ofer Widne Garsecg’ ‘La Hum’ ‘I Sat Upon a Bench’ ‘Natura Apis’ ‘The Root of the Boot’ (early version of ‘The Stone Troll’), ‘Frenchmen Froth’ and ‘Lit and Lang’.]

  1937 Poem ‘The Dragon’s Visit’ in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LV No. 11, February, p. 342 (Oxford, Oxonian Press). Reprinted in Winter’s Tales for Children: 1, 1965.

  Poem ‘Knocking at the Door: Lines induced by sensations when waiting for an answer at the door of an Exalted Academic Person’ (signed ‘Oxymore’) in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LV No. 13, February, p. 403 (Oxford, Oxonian Press). [Original version of ‘The Mewlips’.]

  Poem ‘Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden’ in The Oxford Magazine, Vol. LV No. 15, March, p. 473 (Oxford, Oxonian Press). [Revised from version in The Gryphon, 1923. Further revised as ‘The Hoard’ in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.] ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’ Proceedings of the British Academy, 22 (1936), pp. 245–95 (London, Oxford University Press). Reprinted by OUP, Oxford, 1958. Reprinted in USA in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, edited by Lewis E. Nicholson (University of Notre Dame Press, 1963) and in The Beowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry (New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1968). Translated into Swedish (1975), German (1983). The Hobbit: or There and Back Again (London, George Allen & Unwin). Reprinted 1937, 1942 and 1946. Four colour plates were added for second impression. Second edition 1951; reprinted many times. Third edition 1966; reprinted many times. First USA edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin) 1938; second edition 1956. Third USA edition (New York, Ballantine Books) 1965, revised 1966; reprinted many times.

  1938 Letter about The Hobbit, Observer, London, 20

  February. [Tolkien wrote in reply to letter published in that newspaper on 16 January.] Reprinted in Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, pp. 30–2.

  1940 Preface to Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment: A

  Translation into Modern English Prose by John R. Clark Hall, revised by C. L. Wrenn (London, George Allen & Unwin). New edition 1950.

  1944 Sir Orfeo (Oxford, Academic Copying Office). (Unsigned; edition prepared by Tolkien for wartime Naval Cadets’ course at Oxford.)

  1945 ’Leaf by Niggle’ The Dublin Review, 432 (January), pp. 46–61. (London, Burns Oates & Washbourne). (This short story was later reprinted – see below). Letter ‘The name Coventry’ in The Catholic Herald, 23 February, p. 2. [Reply to letter by ‘H.D.’ published on 9 February.]

  ‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun’ The Welsh Review, Vol. IV No. 4, December, pp. 254–66 (Cardiff, Penmark Press).

  1947‘“Ipplen” in Sawles Warde’ English Studies, Vol. XXVIII No. 6, December, pp. 168–70 (Amsterdam, Swets & Zeitlinger). (In collaboration with S. R. T. O. d’Ardenne.)

  ‘On Fairy-Stories’ Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by C. S. Lewis, pp. 38–89 (London, Oxford University Press). Reprinted – see below. First USA edition (Grand Rapids, Michigan, William B. Eerdmans) 1966.

  1948 ’MS Bodley 34: A re-collation of a collation’ Studia Neophilologica, Vol. XX, 1947–8, pp. 65–72 (Uppsala). (In collaboration with S. R. T. O. d’Ardenne.)

  1949 Farmer Giles of Ham (London, George Allen & Unwin). Reprinted many times. Second edition 1976. New paperback edition 1983. First USA edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin) 1950; second USA edition 1978.

  1953 ‘A Fourteenth-Century Romance’ Radio Times, London, 4 December. [Foreword to BBC Third Programme broadcasts of Tolkien’s translation of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’.] ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’ Essays and Studies, New Series, Vol. VI, pp. 1–18 (London, John Murray). Subsequently reprinted – see below).

  ‘Middle English “Losenger” ‘, Essais de Philologie Moderne, 1951, pp. 63–76 (Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège, fasc. 129, Paris: Les Belle
s Lettres).

  1954 The Fellowship of the Ring: being the first part of The Lord of the Rings (London, George Allen & Unwin). The Two Towers: being the second part of The Lord of the Rings (London, George Allen & Unwin).

  1955 The Return of the King: being the third part of The Lord of the Rings (London, George Allen & Unwin). (Between 1954 and 1966 The Fellowship of the Ring was reprinted in Britain 14 times, The Two Towers 11 times and The Return of the King 10 times. Second edition of all three volumes, 1966; reprinted many times. Paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings in one volume, 1968. First USA edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin), Vol. I 1954, Vols II & III 1955; second USA edition 1967. Ace Books edition, New York, 1965. Ballantine Books edition, New York, 1965; reprinted many times.

  Poem ‘Imram’ in Time and Tide, London, Vol. XXXVI No. 49, 3 December, p. 1561. [Appeared in unpublished MS The Notion Club Papers as ‘The Death of St Brendan’.]

  Preface to The Ancrene Riwle, translated into Modern English by M. B. Salu (London, Burns & Oates, 1955).

  Prefatory note to The Old English Apollonius of Tyre, edited by Peter Goolden, p. iii (London, Oxford University Press, 1958).

  1960 Letter to Triode, No. 18, May. [Comments on article by Arthur K. Weir in previous issue.]

  1962 The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other verses from The Red Book (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin). Reprinted. Second USA edition 1978. Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, edited from MS. Corpus Christi College Cambridge 402, Early English Text Society No. 249, introduction by N. R. Ker (London, Oxford University Press).

  1963 ’English and Welsh’ Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures, pp. 1–41 (Cardiff, University of Wales Press). Distributed in USA by Verry, Lawrence, 1963.

  1964 Tree and Leaf (London, George Allen & Unwin). [A slightly revised version of ‘On Fairy-Stories’ and ‘Leaf by Niggle’.] Reprinted. Second edition 1975. First USA edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin) 1965.

  1965 Poems ‘Once Upon a Time’ and ‘The Dragon’s Visit’ in Winter’s Tales for Children: I, edited by Caroline Hillier, pp. 44–5, 84–7 (London, Macmillan; New York, St Martin’s Press). Reprinted in The Young Magicians, edited by Lin Carter, pp. 254–62 (New York, Ballantine Books, 1969). [The second poem is revised from version in The Oxford Magazine, 1937.]