J.R.R. Tolkien

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The Storyteller

Meanwhile Tolkien continued developing his mythology and languages. As mentioned above, he told his children stories, some of which he developed into those published posthumously as Mr. Bliss, Roverandom, etc. However, according to his own account, one day when he was engaged in the soul-destroying task of marking examination papers, he discovered that one candidate had left one page of an answer-book blank. On this page, moved by who knows what anarchic daemon, he wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit“.

In typical Tolkien fashion, he then decided he needed to find out what a Hobbit was, what sort of a hole it lived in, why it lived in a hole, etc. From this investigation grew a tale that he told to his younger children, and even passed round. In 1936 an incomplete typescript of it came into the hands of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the publishing firm of George Allen and Unwin.

She asked Tolkien to finish it, and presented the complete story to Stanley Unwin, the then Chairman of the firm. He tried it out on his 10-year old son Rayner, who wrote an approving report, and it was published as The Hobbit in 1937. It immediately scored a success, and has not been out of children’s recommended reading lists ever since. It was so successful that Stanley Unwin asked if he had any more similar material available for publication.

By this time Tolkien had begun to make his Legendarium into what he believed to be a more presentable state, and as he later noted, hints of it had already made their way into The Hobbit. He was now calling the full account Quenta Silmarillion, or Silmarillion for short. He presented some of his “completed” tales to Unwin, who sent them to his reader. The reader’s reaction was mixed: dislike of the poetry and praise for the prose but the overall decision at the time was that these were not commercially publishable. Unwin tactfully relayed this message to Tolkien, but asked him again if he was willing to write a sequel to The Hobbit. Tolkien was disappointed at the apparent failure of The Silmarillion, but agreed to take up the challenge of “The New Hobbit”.

This soon developed into something much more than a children’s story; for the highly complex 16-year history of what became The Lord of the Rings consult the works listed below. Suffice it to say that the now adult Rayner Unwin was deeply involved in the later stages of this opus, dealing magnificently with a dilatory and temperamental author who, at one stage, was offering the whole work to a commercial rival. It is thanks to Rayner Unwin’s advocacy that we owe the fact that this book was published at all – Andave laituvalmes! His father’s firm decided to incur the probable loss of £1,000 for the succès d’estime, and publish it under the title of The Lord of the Rings in three parts during 1954 and 1955, with USA rights going to Houghton Mifflin. It soon became apparent that both author and publishers had greatly underestimated the work’s public appeal.

Home front

A weak and emaciated Tolkien spent the remainder of the war alternating between hospitals and garrison duties, being deemed medically unfit for general service. During his recovery in a cottage in Little Haywood, Staffordshire, he began to work on what he called The Book of Lost Tales, beginning with The Fall of Gondolin. Lost Tales represented Tolkien's attempt to create a mythology for England, a project he would abandon without ever completing. Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, but he had recovered enough to do home service at various camps. It was at this time that Edith bore their first child, John Francis Reuel Tolkien. In a 1941 letter, Tolkien described his son John as ' round about the Battle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed as far off as it does no'w. Tolkien was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant on 6 January 1918. When he was stationed at Kingston upon Hull, he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and Edith began to dance for him in a clearing among the flowering hemlock. After his wife's death in 1971, Tolkien remembered,

I never called Edith Luthien—but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire. In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing—and dance. But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos.

On 16 July 1919 Tolkien was taken off active service, at Fovant, on Salisbury Plain, with a temporary disability pension.

Academic and writing career

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On 3 November 1920, Tolkien was demobilized and left the army, retaining his rank of lieutenant. His first civilian job after World War I was at 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 a post as reader in English language at the University of Leeds, becoming the youngest professor there. While at Leeds, he produced A Middle English Vocabulary and a definitive edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with E. V. Gordon; both became academic standard works for several decades. He translated Sir Gawain, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. In 1925, he returned to Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, with a fellowship at Pembroke College.

In mid-1919, he began to tutor undergraduates privately, most importantly those of Lady Margaret Hall and St Hugh's College, given that the women's colleges were in great need of good teachers in their early years, and Tolkien as a married professor was considered suitable, as a bachelor don would not have been.

During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, while living at 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford. He also published a philological essay in 1932 on the name 'Nodens', following Sir Mortimer Wheeler's unearthing of a Roman Asclepeion at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, in 1928.

Beowulf

In the 1920s, Tolkien undertook a translation of Beowulf, which he finished in 1926, but did not publish. It was finally edited by his son and published in 2014, more than 40 years after Tolkien's death and almost 90 years after its completion.

Ten years after finishing his translation, Tolkien gave a highly acclaimed lecture on the work, 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics', which had a lasting influence on Beowulf research. Lewis E. Nicholson said that the article is 'widely recognized as a turning point in Beowulfian criticism', noting that Tolkien established the primacy of the poetic nature of the work as opposed to its purely linguistic elements. At the time, the consensus of scholarship deprecated Beowulf for dealing with childish battles with monsters rather than realistic tribal warfare; Tolkien argued that the author of Beowulf was addressing human destiny in general, not as limited by particular tribal politics, and therefore the monsters were essential to the poem. Where Beowulf does deal with specific tribal struggles, as at Finnsburg, Tolkien argued firmly against reading in fantastic elements. In the essay, Tolkien also revealed how highly he regarded Beowulf: 'Beowulf is among my most valued sources'; this influence may be seen throughout his Middle-earth legendarium.

According to Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien began his series of lectures on Beowulf in a most striking way, entering the room silently, fixing the audience with a look, and suddenly declaiming in Old English the opening lines of the poem, starting 'with a great cry of Hwæt!' It was a dramatic impersonation of an Anglo-Saxon bard in a mead hall, and it made the students realize that Beowulf was not just a set text but 'a powerful piece of dramatic poetr'y. Decades later, W. H. Auden wrote to his former professor, thanking him for the 'unforgettable experience' of hearing him recite Beowulf, and stating 'The voice was the voice of Gandalf'.

Second World War

In the run-up to the Second World War, Tolkien was earmarked as a codebreaker. In January 1939, he was asked to serve in the cryptographic department of the Foreign Office in the event of national emergency. Beginning on 27 March, he took an instructional course at the London HQ of the Government Code and Cypher School. He was informed in October that his services would not be required.

In 1945, Tolkien moved to Merton College, Oxford, becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959. He served as an external examiner for University College, Galway, for many years. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland. Tolkien completed The Lord of the Rings in 1948, close to a decade after the first sketches.

Family

The Tolkiens had four children: John Francis Reuel Tolkien, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, Christopher John Reuel Tolkien and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien. Tolkien was very devoted to his children and sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas when they were young.

Retirement

During his life in retirement, from 1959 up to his death in 1973, Tolkien received steadily increasing public attention and literary fame. In 1961, his friend C. S. Lewis even nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The sales of his books were so profitable that he regretted that he had not chosen early retirement. In a 1972 letter, he deplored having become a cult-figure, but admitted that 'even the nose of a very modest idol... cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!'

Fan attention became so intense that Tolkien had to take his phone number out of the public directory, and eventually he and Edith moved to Bournemouth, which was then a seaside resort patronized by the British upper middle class. Tolkien's status as a best-selling author gave them easy entry into polite society, but Tolkien deeply missed the company of his fellow Inklings. Edith, however, was overjoyed to step into the role of a society hostess, which had been the reason that Tolkien selected Bournemouth in the first place. The genuine and deep affection between Ronald and Edith was demonstrated by their care about the other's health, in details like wrapping presents, in the generous way he gave up his life at Oxford so she could retire to Bournemouth, and in her pride in his becoming a famous author. They were tied together, too, by love for their children and grandchildren.

In his retirement Tolkien was a consultant and translator for The Jerusalem Bible, published in 1966. He was initially assigned a larger portion to translate, but, due to other commitments, only managed to offer some criticisms of other contributors and a translation of the Book of Jonah.

Tolkien was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1972 New Year Honours and received the insignia of the Order at Buckingham Palace on 28 March 1972. In the same year Oxford University gave him an honorary Doctorate of Letters.

DEATH

He had the name Luthien engraved on Edith's tombstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford. When Tolkien died 21 months later on 2 September 1973 from a bleeding ulcer and chest infection, at the age of 81, he was buried in the same grave, with 'Beren' added to his name. Tolkien's will was proven on 20 December 1973, with his estate valued at £190,577

Early Life

1857	Birth of Arthur Reuel Tolkien, Tolkien’s father, in Birmingham.
1870	Birth of Mabel Suffield, Tolkien’s mother, in Birmingham.
21 January 1889	Birth of Edith Mary Bratt, Tolkien’s future wife, in Gloucester.
16 April 1891	Arthur Tolkien and Mabel Suffield get married in Cape Town Cathedral.
3 January 1892	Birth of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (now part of South Africa).
17 February 1894	Birth of Tolkien’s younger brother, Hilary.
Spring 1895	Mabel Tolkien returns to England with her two boys.
15 February 1896	Death of Arthur Tolkien in Bloemfontein.
Summer 1896	Mabel Tolkien rents a cottage near Sarehole Mill, Moseley, on the outskirts of Birmingham.
June 1900	Mabel is accepted into the Roman Catholic Church.
Autumn 1900	Tolkien attends King Edward’s School, Birmingham as a fee-paying student, but he does not attend in December.
c. 1901	Mabel and her boys move to King’s Heath, another suburb of Birmingham.
1902	The Tolkiens move to Edgbaston, Birmingham. The boys are enrolled at St Philip’s Grammar School, but later in the year Ronald is educated at home.
January 1903	Tolkien attends King Edward’s School again, this time on a scholarship.
Spring 1904	Mabel is diagnosed with diabetes, and is hospitalised for a few weeks. She dies in November. Ronald and his brother Hilary become wards of Father Morgan, a priest at the Birmingham Oratory.
1905	Aunt Beatrice accepts the boys into her home in Stirling Road.
Autumn Term 1907	Tolkien probably invents his private language ‘Naffarin’ based on Spanish and Latin.
1908	The boys move to Duchess Road and live with Mrs. Faulkner. Tolkien meets Edith Bratt, another lodger.
Autumn 1909	Father Francis Morgan discovers the romance between Tolkien and Edith. Ronald fails a scholarship to Oxford.
January 1910	The Tolkien brothers move to new lodgings where Ronald’s romance with Edith continues until Father Francis forbids him to communicate with her.
March 1910	Edith moves to Cheltenham.
4 November 1910	Tolkien speaks in his school debating society deploring the occurrence of the Norman Conquest.
17 December 1910	Tolkien obtains a scholarship at Oxford’s Exeter College.
March 1911	Tolkien’s poem ‘The Battle of the Eastern Field’ is printed in the King Edward’s School Chronicle.
Summer Term 1911	Tolkien becomes school librarian, and the T.C.B.S. is formed.
August 1911	Tolkien visits Switzerland before starting university.

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Oxford and Early Career

October 1911	Tolkien begins studying at Oxford.
November 1911	Tolkien begins studying Finnish.
3 November 1912	Tolkien becomes a member of the Exeter College Essay Club.
1913	Tolkien writes to Edith on his 21st birthday, and soon after they become engaged.
Late Jul-Aug 1913	Tolkien is paid to accompany two Mexican boys and their aunts to Paris and Dinard. One of the aunts is hit by a car and dies.
January 1914	Tolkien and Edith become betrothed after she is received into the Catholic Church.
24 September 1914	Tolkien writes his first identifiable “Middle-earth” fragment ‘The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star’.
Autumn 1914	Tolkien begins to write The Story of Kullervo.
27 November 1914	Tolkien revises the poem later called ‘The Horns of Ylmir’ [ie. Ulmo].
April 1915	The poems ‘You & Me and the Cottage of Lost Play’ and ‘Kôr’ are written. Tolkien gains a First Class Honours degree. He obtains a commission in the Lancashire Fusiliers and trains in Bedford and Staffordshire.
12 September 1915	Tolkien writes the poem ‘A Song of Aryador’ while stationed in Staffordshire.
25-6 Sep 1915	Final meeting of all four main members of the T.C.B.S. in Lichfield.
c. 8 Nov 1915	Tolkien writes the poem ‘Kortirion among the Trees’.
December 1915	Tolkien’s poem ‘Goblin Feet’ is published in Oxford Poetry 1915.
Jan-Feb 1916	Tolkien writes ‘Over Old Hills and Far Away’ a poem featuring Tinfang Warble.
22 March 1916	Ronald and Edith are married in Warwick.
Apr-May 1916	Tolkien was based in Otley, near Leeds as he took an army signalling course. Edith lives in Great Haywood.
6 June 1916	Tolkien travels to France. On the boat he writes the poem ‘The Lonely Isle’. Tolkien becomes a Battalion Signalling Officer.
1 July 1916	Battle of the Somme begins. Rob Gilson, close friend and member of the T.C.B.S. dies.
27 October 1916	Tolkien reports sick.
9 November 1916	Suffering from trench fever, Tolkien returns to England.
3 December 1916	G.B. Smith, a member of the T.C.B.S., dies from wounds received 4 days earlier.
Jan-Feb 1917	Tolkien works on The Book of Lost Tales during convalescence in Great Haywood.
12 February 1917	The first version of The Cottage of Lost Play is completed by this date.
Spring 1917	‘The Fall of Gondolin’ is probably written before June. He is posted to Yorkshire, but he suffers recurring bouts of illness.
c. May 1917	Tolkien is inspired by watching Edith dance in a ‘hemlock’ glade near Roos. This is the germ for the meeting of Lúthien and Beren in his legendarium.
Before 13 Aug 1917	Tolkien is admitted to Brooklands Officers’ Hospital, Hull, where among other things he works on ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’, ‘The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel’, and on a lexicon and grammar of his Gnomish language.
16 November 1917	The Tolkiens’ eldest son, John, is born in Cheltenham.
Late 1917	Tolkien probably starts work on The Tale of Turambar.
c. Jul-Sep 1918	Tolkien is readmitted to Brooklands Officers’ Hospital.
November 1918	The Tolkiens return to Oxford. Tolkien obtains employment with the New English Dictionary [Oxford English Dictionary]. Tolkien probably begins work on the first version of ‘The Music of the Ainur’.
1919	Tolkien works as a freelance tutor in addition to work for the Oxford English Dictionary. He probably writes an early version of ‘The Chaining of Melko’, ‘The Coming of the Elves and the Making of Kôr’ and ‘The Theft of Melko and the Darkening of Valinor’.
10 March 1920	Tolkien reads a shortened version of ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ to the Exeter College Essay Club.
Autumn 1920	He begins work as a Reader in English Language at Leeds University. Michael, the Tolkiens’ second son is born on 22 October.
December 1920	Tolkien writes a letter to John as if from Father Christmas, which is the first of The Father Christmas Letters.
March 1921	Tolkien finds suitable rented rooms in Headingley, Leeds for his family, who move up from Oxford to join him a few weeks later. Tolkien may have begun an alliterative poetic version of The Children of Húrin once he was settled in Leeds.
Late August 1921	The Tolkiens move nearer to Leeds University at St Mark’s Terrace, Woodhouse Lane. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon begin work on their edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
11 May 1922	A Middle English Vocabulary is published. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon begin work on their edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Summer 1923	Convalescing from pneumonia on his brother’s farm, Tolkien turns to his mythology again, and probably works on an early form of Qenya.
Oct/Nov 1923	‘The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery-Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked’ is published in Yorkshire Poetry.
December 1923	The Father Christmas Letters become more elaborate.
17 March 1924	The Tolkiens move into a three-storey house in Darnley Road, West Park, Leeds.
May 1924	Tolkien writes the poem ‘The Nameless Land’.
16 July 1924	Tolkien is appointed as Professor of English Language at Leeds University.
21 November 1924	Christopher, the Tolkiens’ third son is born.
Early 1925	Tolkien works on the alliterative poem ‘The Flight of the Noldoli from Valinor’.
23 April 1925	Tolkien and E.V. Gordon’s edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is published by the Clarendon Press.
June 1925	Publication of the poem ‘Light as Leaf on Lindentree’ in The Gryphon.
Summer 1925	Tolkien begins work on the Lay of Leithian.
Early Sep 1925	On holiday in Filey, Yorkshire, Tolkien relates the story of a toy dog, ‘Rover’, which is posthumously published as Roverandom.
Autumn 1925	Tolkien takes up an appointment as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. He purchases a house in Oxford.
7 January 1926	The Tolkien family move to 22 Northmoor Road, Oxford.
February 1926	Tolkien forms the Kolbítar club (Coalbiters).
11 May 1926	First known meeting between C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, and they soon become friends.
Autumn 1926	Tolkien lectures on The Old English Exodus for the first time. Tolkien probably writes the Sketch of the Mythology and the first version of Farmer Giles of Ham may date from this year.
January 1928	A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District with Tolkien’s foreword is published.
Mar-Apr 1928	Tolkien works on Cantos IV-IX of The Lay of Leithian.
Summer 1928	Tolkien probably illustrates and writes Mr. Bliss.
18 June 1929	Priscilla, the Tolkiens’ only daughter, and youngest child is born.
December 1929	C.S. Lewis reads and critiques the Lay of Leithian.
14 January 1930	The Tolkiens move next door to 20 Northmoor Road.
Spring 1930	Tolkien composes a large part of The Fall of Arthur.

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The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Academic Career

Summer 1930	About this time, Tolkien may have written the first sentence of The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit“.
Sep-Oct 1930	Tolkien works on Cantos X-XIII of The Lay of Leithian.
23 September 1930	Tolkien completes a fair manuscript copy of The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun.
Autumn 1930	Quenta Noldorinwa, an expansion of the Sketch of the Mythology may have been written at this time.
September 1931	Tolkien works on The Lay of Leithian, but abandons it at Canto XIV, line 4223.
19-20 Sep 1931	Tolkien and Hugo Dyson talk with C.S. Lewis, who begins to shift from believing in God to accepting Christ. This event also inspires Tolkien to later write the poem ‘Mythopoeia’.
Autumn 1931	The essay A Secret Vice about inventing private languages is probably written at this time.
Late? 1932	Tolkien probably lends the typescript of The Hobbit to C.S. Lewis, which at this time ends with the death of Smaug.
Early Autumn 1933	Tolkien probably writes lectures on Beowulf, which will provide the basis for his famous essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.
Autumn 1933	The Inklings meetings under the auspices of C.S. Lewis become an important part of Tolkien’s social life.
9 November 1933	His poem ‘Errantry’ is published in The Oxford Magazine.
15 February 1934	The poem ‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil’ is published in the Oxford Magazine. Tolkien’s paper Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale is published in the second half of 1934.
11 June 1935	Death of Father Francis Morgan, Tolkien’s guardian.
Early 1936	Susan Dagnall of Allen & Unwin reads the unfinished manuscript of The Hobbit. She urges him to finish the narrative, and it is accepted for publication.
7 August 1936	An excerpt from Tolkien’s translation of Pearl is read on BBC Radio. Some time this year Songs for the Philologists by Tolkien, E.V. Gordon et al is privately printed by students at University College, London.
25 November 1936	Tolkien delivers his lecture, Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics, to the British Academy in London. Tolkien probably wrote The Lost Road at about this time, which marks the invention of Númenor.
April 1937	Tolkien takes an exhausting walking holiday in the Quantock Hills with C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield.
1 July 1937	Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics is published.
21 September 1937	The Hobbit is published. Because of its success, Stanley Unwin subsequently urges Tolkien to write a sequel, which he begins. This is the germ of The Lord of the Rings.
15 Nov-19 Dec 1937	Tolkien resumes work on the Quenta Silmarillion, but abandons this to work on ‘The new Hobbit’.
14 January 1938	Tolkien’s talk Anglo-Saxon Verse is broadcast on BBC Radio.
14 February 1938	Tolkien reads an expanded early version of Farmer Giles of Ham to the Lovelace Society.
4 March 1938	Before this date the Black Riders have appeared during the writing of The Lord of the Rings.
Late August 1938	The narrative has reached the seventh chapter – the Hobbits arrival at the Prancing Pony.
1-15 Sep 1938	Tolkien continues writing and reaches Rivendell.
15 Sept-Oct 1938	Tolkien rewrites earlier parts of the narrative, and continues to alter the names of the Hobbits.
8 March 1939	At St. Andrews University, Scotland, Tolkien gives his lecture On Fairy-Stories.
27-29 March 1939	Tolkien in London does 3 days’ code and cipher training.
Autumn 1939	Charles Williams starts attending meetings of ‘The Inklings’. Tolkien works on early versions of ‘The Council of Elrond’, ‘The Ring Goes South’, and a first draft of ‘The Mines of Moria’.
26-7 August 1940	Tolkien invents Saruman as a reason for Gandalf’s delay in reaching Bag End in The Lord of the Rings.
Autumn 1940	He rewrites many sections of The Fellowship of the Ring before taking the narrative beyond Balin’s tomb in Moria.
Late 1941	Tolkien works on the Lothlórien chapters and the first versions of ‘The Breaking of the Fellowship’ and commences work on the early chapters of The Two Towers.
9 February 1942	After this date ‘The King of the Golden Hall’ is written.
c. April 1942	Tolkien writes Leaf by Niggle.
Mid 1942	Tolkien writes what becomes ‘Helm’s Deep’, ‘The Road to Isengard’, ‘Flotsam and Jetsam’, ‘The Voice of Saruman’, and ‘The Palantír’.
1943	Tolkien is busy with university duties, work as an air-raid warden plus other distractions and is unable to work on The Lord of the Rings.
December 1943	Tolkien writes his final Father Christmas Letter to Priscilla.
April 1944	Tolkien works on ‘The Taming of Sméagol’, ‘The Passage of the Marshes’, ‘The Black Gate is Closed’ and ‘Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit’.
May 1944	Tolkien writes early versions of the later chapters ‘The Window on the West’, The Forbidden Pool’, ‘Journey to the Cross-Roads’, ‘The Stairs of Cirith Ungol’, ‘Shelob’s Lair’ and ‘The Choices of Master Samwise’.
January 1945	Leaf by Niggle is published in the Dublin Review.
23 June 1945	Tolkien becomes Oxford’s Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.
December 1945	The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun appears in the Welsh Review.
Christmas 1945	Tolkien works on The Notion Club Papers.
Summer 1946	Tolkien reads his newly-completed The Drowning of Anadûnê to his son, Christopher.
Autumn 1946	Tolkien works on the chapters ‘Minas Tirith’, ‘The Passing of the Grey Company’, ‘The Muster of Rohan’, ‘The Siege of Gondor’, ‘The Battle of the Pelennor Fields’ ‘The Pyre of Denethor’, ‘The Houses of Healing’, ‘The Last Debate’ and ‘The Black Gate Opens’.
March 1947	The Tolkien family move to Manor Road, Oxford.
4 December 1947	On Fairy-Stories is published in Essays Presented to Charles Williams.
Aug-Sep 1948	Tolkien drafts the chapters ‘The Land of Shadow’, ‘Mount Doom’, ‘The Field of Cormallen’, ‘The Steward and the King’, ‘Many Partings’, ‘Homeward Bound’, ‘The Scouring of the Shire’ and ‘The Grey Havens’.
Autumn 1948	Tolkien probably writes a new version of The Downfall of Númenor.
Feb-Oct 1949	Tolkien types up The Lord of the Rings making corrections as he works.
c. Autumn 1949	Tolkien begins negotiations with Milton Waldman at the publishers Collins about publishing The Lord of the Rings.
20 October 1949	Farmer Giles of Ham is published.
Winter 1949	Tolkien resumes work on The Lay of Leithian.
Early 1950	Tolkien resumes work on the Quenta Silmarillion including ‘Of Valinor and the Two Trees’, ‘Of the Coming of the Elves’ and ‘Of Men and Dwarves’.
April 1950	Tolkien gives an ultimatum to Sir Stanley Unwin requesting an immediate response in answer to his suggestion to publish both The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Later that year Waldman informs Tolkien that The Lord of the Rings must be cut.
August 1950	Tolkien probably works on ‘Durin’s Folk’ from Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings after this date.
Summer 1951	Tolkien probably works on the Annals of Aman, reworks The Tale of Years, and begins to write The Grey Annals. He writes a 12-page manuscript which is later named ‘Of Maeglin’.
July-August 1951	The Tolkiens holiday in Ireland.
10-13 Sep 1951	Tolkien gives a paper at an international conference in Liège.
Late 1951	Tolkien probably writes a long letter to Waldman explaining why The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings are indivisible and interconnected. During this year Tolkien probably works on a prose version of the later part of Narn i Chin Húrin from ‘The Return of Túrin’ to his death.
April 1952	Collins, the publishers, decline to publish The Lord of the Rings.
Late August 1952	Tolkien makes some recordings of the Gollum chapter in The Hobbit, and some poems from The Lord of the Rings.
September 1952	Tolkien polishes the text of The Lord of the Rings including ‘Eärendel was a Mariner’ and ‘The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen’.
November 1952	Allen & Unwin confirm that they would like to publish The Lord of the Rings on a profit-sharing basis.
Early Spring 1953	Tolkien finishes his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
30 March 1953	The Tolkiens move to Sandfield Road, Oxford.
15 April 1953	Tolkien gives a lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Glasgow.
August 1953	The subtitles The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King are chosen for individual volumes of The Lord of the Rings.
October 1953	Publication of The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.
6 December 1953	Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is broadcast on BBC Radio.
1954	The early part of the year is taken up with correcting proofs for The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien works on the appendices and index throughout much of the second half of the year.
20 July 1954	Tolkien is awarded a D.Litt from Dublin University.
29 July 1954	Publication of The Fellowship of the Ring.
11 November 1954	Publication of The Two Towers.
3 December 1954	BBC Radio broadcast The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.
January 1955	Tolkien reworks ‘Tal-Elmar’ in-between more work on the appendices.
30 Jul-14 Aug 1955	Tolkien and Priscilla cross Europe by train for a holiday in Italy.
2 October 1955	Tolkien is awarded an honorary doctorate at Liège University.
20 October 1955	Publication of The Return of the King.
21 October 1955	Tolkien gives the first O’Donnell lecture, English and Welsh.
Nov-Dec 1955	The Fellowship of the Ring is serialised in 6 half-hour episodes on BBC Radio.
3 December 1955	Tolkien’s poem ‘Imram’ is published in Time and Tide.
1956	Tolkien spends an increasing amount of time answering fan mail, and is involved with translators working on The Lord of the Rings.
Nov-Dec 1956	BBC Radio serialises The Two Towers and The Return of the King in 6 half-hour episodes.
1957	Many Tolkien manuscripts are purchased for £1500 by Marquette University.
23 April 1957	Tolkien is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
August 1957	Tolkien wins an International Fantasy Award.
September 1957	Tolkien meets Forrest J. Ackerman to discuss an animated film of The Lord of the Rings.
1958	Tolkien is on sabbatical leave for the first part of the year.
August 1958	Tolkien struggles to complete his edition of Ancrene Wisse.
April 1959	Although he had toyed with the idea previously, at about this time, Tolkien begins developing his round-earth cosmology of Arda.

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Retirement and Later Life

5 June 1959	Tolkien gives his valedictory address in Oxford.
Autumn 1959	Tolkien probably works on ‘The Converse of Manwë and Eru’, ‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’ and the ‘Reincarnation of Elves’.
Early 1960	Tolkien probably works on ‘Quendi and Eldar’, ‘Cuivienyarna’ and the fragments ‘Orcs’, ‘The Elessar’, and ‘Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn’.
March 1960	Tolkien probably writes ‘Aldarion and Erendis’, ‘A Description of the Isle of Númenor’ and ‘The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor’.
17 August 1961	Pamela Chandler photographs Tolkien for the first time.
26 October 1961	The Puffin paperback edition of The Hobbit is published.
22 November 1962	The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is published.
12 December 1962	An interview with Tolkien is broadcast on BBC TV.
8 July 1963	Tolkien’s lecture English and Welsh is published.
22 November 1963	Death of C.S. Lewis.
28 May 1964	Tree and Leaf is published.
January 1965	Tolkien expands Aldarion and Erendis.
20 January 1965	Tolkien is interviewed for 2 hours by Denys Gueroult. The Tolkien Society of America is formed.
c. May 1965	The Fellowship of the Ring is published in an unauthorised American paperback version by Ace books.
late May 1965	Tolkien reworks his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Summer 1965	Tolkien has to spend a lot of time revising the text of The Lord of the Rings to establish copyright in the US.
July 1965	Unauthorised paperbacks of The Two Towers and The Return of the King are published by Ace books.
August 1965	Tolkien expands ‘The Heirs of Elendil’ for Appendix A.
Oct-Dec 1965	Ballantine Books publish the 3 paperback volumes of the revised text of The Lord of the Rings.
1966	The Jerusalem Bible is published, which includes Tolkien’s translation of the book of Jonah.
22-3 March 1966	The Tolkiens celebrate their Golden Wedding and enjoy a performance of Donald Swann’s song-cycle of The Road Goes Ever on.
c. Jun-Sep 1966	Clyde S. Kilby attempts to assist Tolkien with the ‘Silmarillion’ material.
7 August 1966	Tolkien is photographed by Pamela Chandler for the second time, this time entirely in colour.
September 1966	Publication of The Tolkien Reader.
14 Sep – 6 Oct 1966	The Tolkiens cruise round the Mediterranean, as far as Venice and back.
27 October 1966	The second edition of The Lord of the Rings is published.
November 1966	The Royal Society for Literature awards Tolkien the A.C. Benson silver medal for outstanding services to literature.
16 January 1967	Tolkien has finished Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings by this date.
Late Feb-Mar 1967	Tolkien works on corrections for the first one-volume paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings and writes about the palantíri.
c. March 1967	Humphrey Carpenter visits Tolkien, and later describes the encounter in his biography.
15 June 1967	Tolkien makes recordings of poems at home for Caedmon records.
31 October 1967	The Road Goes Ever On is published in the US.
9 November 1967	Smith of Wootton Major is published.
8 January 1968	Tolkien makes a final typescript of ‘The New Shadow’.
5-9 February 1968	The BBC film Tolkien in various Oxford locations.
30 March 1968	The documentary Tolkien in Oxford is broadcast on BBC TV.
Summer 1968	Ronald and Edith move to Poole, near Bournemouth. Tolkien has a bad fall and is hospitalised for over a month.
Sep-Nov 1968	The BBC broadcasts an 8-part half-hour radio dramatisation of The Hobbit.
October 1968	While helping Tolkien with his new office and library, Joy Hill finds the manuscript of Bilbo’s Last Song. Tolkien may have written ‘The Shibboleth of Fëanor’ about this time.
July 1969	Tolkien probably writes ‘The Disaster of the Gladden Fields’, ‘Cirion and Eorl’ and ‘Part of the Legend of Amroth and Nimrodel’.
6 November 1969	The ‘informal’ beginning of The Tolkien Society.
Early 1970	Tolkien makes some changes to the story ‘Of Maeglin’.
2 May 1970	Tolkien receives an honorary D.Litt from Nottingham University.
July 1970	Allen & Unwin produce the poster A Map of Middle-Earth by Pauline Baynes.
16 December 1970	Tolkien’s 1965 interview with Denys Gueroult is broadcast on BBC radio for the first time.
25 May 1971	Tolkien is photographed by Lord Snowdon.
29 November 1971	Death of Edith Tolkien.
1 January 1972	Tolkien is awarded a CBE in the New Year’s honours list.
13 March 1972	Tolkien moves to rooms in 21 Merton Street, Oxford.
28 March 1972	Tolkien receives his CBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
3 June 1972	He is awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Oxford University.
27 June 1972	The Tolkien Society’s founder, Vera Chapman, meets Tolkien at a reception at Allen & Unwin’s offices in London. Tolkien consents to becoming the Society’s Honorary President and states, “If I can help your society in any way, I will.”
Nov/Dec 1972	Tolkien probably wrote material which was later published as ‘Glorfindel’ and ‘Círdan’.
12 July 1973	Tolkien receives an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Edinburgh University.
August 1973	Tolkien writes about Galadriel and Celeborn – probably the final addition to his legendarium.
2 September 1973	Death of J.R.R. Tolkien from a stomach ulcer.