J.R.R. Tolkien

Hello! My name is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, but my friends and family always called me Ronald. I was born far from England, in a place called Bloemfontein in South Africa, on January 3rd, 1892. When I was a little boy, my family moved to the English countryside, and I loved it there. My mother, Mabel, was my first teacher. She taught me all about plants and trees, but what I loved most were the languages she taught me, like Latin and French. Soon, I started inventing my own secret languages just for fun. It was my favorite game. Sadly, my mother passed away in 1904 when I was only twelve. It was a very hard time, but my love for stories and languages became a great comfort to me.

At school, I made some wonderful friends. We formed a secret club we called the T.C.B.S. We would meet for tea, share our poems and drawings, and dream about how we would change the world with our art. It was also during these years, in 1908, that I met a wonderful young woman named Edith Bratt. We fell in love. After school, I went to Oxford University, but my studies were interrupted when the Great War, World War I, began in 1914. Before I left to become a soldier, Edith and I got married on March 22nd, 1916. The war was a terrible and frightening experience. I lost two of my dearest friends from our club, which filled me with a deep sadness. My time in the war taught me a lot about bravery, friendship, and loss.

After the war, I returned to my studies and eventually became a professor at Oxford University in 1925. I taught old languages and ancient stories of heroes and dragons. Edith and I had a family with four wonderful children, and I loved making up bedtime stories for them. One summer day, while I was grading exam papers, I came across a blank page. For no reason at all, I scribbled down a sentence: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I had no idea what a hobbit was. But the idea stuck with me. I had to figure out who this hobbit was and what kind of adventures he might have. That one little sentence was the tiny seed for a very big story.

The story about that hobbit grew and grew. I created a whole world for him to live in, with maps, different peoples like elves and dwarves, and even the secret languages I had been inventing since I was a boy. This story became a book called The Hobbit, which was published in 1937. People, especially children, loved it. My publisher asked me to write a sequel. I started writing another story about hobbits, but this one became much bigger, darker, and more grown-up. It took me more than ten years to finish. This grand adventure became The Lord of the Rings, which was so long it had to be published in three books between 1954 and 1955.

I spent the rest of my life teaching, writing, and adding more details to the history of my imaginary world, which I called Middle-earth. My dear Edith was the inspiration for some of my most beautiful stories of love and courage. I lived to be 81 years old, passing away on September 2nd, 1973. Even though my own story has ended, the adventures in Middle-earth live on. Today, people all over the world still read my books and are inspired by the tales of small heroes who show great courage, the importance of friendship, and the belief that hope can be found even in the darkest of times.