J.R.R. Tolkien had a real aptitude for languages. In addition to creating his own just for fun, he learned Danish, Dutch, French, German, Gothic, Greek, Italian, Latin, Lombardic, Middle and Old English, Old Norse, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Welsh and Medieval Welsh. [1]
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien is known to millions around the world as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in South Africa to Arthur Reuel Tolkien, an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary, born on 17 February 1894.
Young Ronald was bitten by a large spider when young. His nurse sucked out the poison, but it is thought the terrifying incident inspired the spider episode in The Hobbit. The boy’s health was poor when he was young. His mother took him to Cape Town and from there, went with her boys to England in April 1895. While they were staying in England news came that Arthur had died of a haemorrhage in February 1896.
Mabel had hated Bloemfontein and had no desire to return there. At first, she and her sons lived with family in Birmingham, but then moved to the village of Sarehole in Worcestershire. Sarehole Mill later influenced his descriptions of Hobbiton, and the lovely surrounding countryside would later become The Shire in his fiction.
Tolkien was able to read by the age of four (taught by his mother) and adored fantasy stories and Arthurian legends. “I desired dragons with a profound desire”, he later recorded. At the age of seven, he began writing his own tales of dragons.
Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.
J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973 and is buried in Oxford where he spent most of his adult life.