Title : Happy Birthday, Tolkien!
link : Happy Birthday, Tolkien!
Happy Birthday, Tolkien!
On this day in 1892, a very talented boy was born to an English family in South Africa. Most of his childhood, though, was spent back in England, in a village called Sarehole.
Well - you probably know a bit about him already. In case you don’t, here is a link to the Wikipedia entry. Thinking about it, his life greatly affected how and what he wrote. He was a devout Catholic and that comes through in Lord Of The Rings, but he doesn’t hit his readers over the head with his religion. It took me a while to notice it!
His wartime experience in France is certainly the background for the Land of Mordor. He did lose two out of his three closest friends from school.
When I was at university I was about the only student who hadn’t read the book. And even so, it took me years to get around to it. Once I did, I was hooked. There was a girl in my Honours English class who wanted to write her thesis on it and most of the English staff wouldn’t supervise it because “It’s not literary enough.”
Clearly, they hadn’t read it! In the end, she got her supervisor - Professor Brown was a huge Tolkien fan, who had a manuscript hand written and bound as a Christmas gift for one of Tolkien’s friends, which he used to hand around reverently in his tutorials, back in the days when a tutorial group was five or six people.
I love the power of the writing, the characters and the story. It’s not written for children, but has some of the things I love best about children’s fiction. Story and characters you can care about are more important than mere “beautiful writing”, although the writing is beautiful too.
And then there is The Hobbit, which was written for children, and has a hero who develops from a man who has to be dragged kicking and screaming from his comfort zone into one who is brave and quick thinking and is willing to trust his life to adventure. The elderly Bilbo, in the sequel, rejoices at being “back on the road with Dwarves!”
I have several copies of The Hobbit, including one illustrated by Michael Hague, one by Alan Lee, a couple illustrated by Tolkien himself and one annotated edition which, as wrk, as the annotations, features art work from around the world. I have my eye on a newer edition, which I bought for my great nephew, Eden. Oh, and there’s the special ebook I have, which has a number of goodies, including the option to hear Tolkien sing. As I hear the story, he got hold of one of those newfangled tape recorders and had a bit of fun recording some of his songs and poems. So these were worked into the enhanced ebook. (I also have some CDs of the Tolkien Ensemble performing the songs to their own music, one of which has Christopher Lee singing Treebeard.)
Something I learned a while back is that the meeting of the Ents, that race of walking trees, is cheekily meant to represent a faculty meeting, and Treebeard is meant to be Tolkien’s best friend, C.S Lewis, who did have a deep, booming voice like Treebeard’s.
Anyway, happy birthday, Professor! I am off to bed to reread some of your greatest book!
 |
| Public domain. The baby is Tolkien! |
Well - you probably know a bit about him already. In case you don’t, here is a link to the Wikipedia entry. Thinking about it, his life greatly affected how and what he wrote. He was a devout Catholic and that comes through in Lord Of The Rings, but he doesn’t hit his readers over the head with his religion. It took me a while to notice it!
His wartime experience in France is certainly the background for the Land of Mordor. He did lose two out of his three closest friends from school.
When I was at university I was about the only student who hadn’t read the book. And even so, it took me years to get around to it. Once I did, I was hooked. There was a girl in my Honours English class who wanted to write her thesis on it and most of the English staff wouldn’t supervise it because “It’s not literary enough.”
Clearly, they hadn’t read it! In the end, she got her supervisor - Professor Brown was a huge Tolkien fan, who had a manuscript hand written and bound as a Christmas gift for one of Tolkien’s friends, which he used to hand around reverently in his tutorials, back in the days when a tutorial group was five or six people.
I love the power of the writing, the characters and the story. It’s not written for children, but has some of the things I love best about children’s fiction. Story and characters you can care about are more important than mere “beautiful writing”, although the writing is beautiful too.
And then there is The Hobbit, which was written for children, and has a hero who develops from a man who has to be dragged kicking and screaming from his comfort zone into one who is brave and quick thinking and is willing to trust his life to adventure. The elderly Bilbo, in the sequel, rejoices at being “back on the road with Dwarves!”
I have several copies of The Hobbit, including one illustrated by Michael Hague, one by Alan Lee, a couple illustrated by Tolkien himself and one annotated edition which, as wrk, as the annotations, features art work from around the world. I have my eye on a newer edition, which I bought for my great nephew, Eden. Oh, and there’s the special ebook I have, which has a number of goodies, including the option to hear Tolkien sing. As I hear the story, he got hold of one of those newfangled tape recorders and had a bit of fun recording some of his songs and poems. So these were worked into the enhanced ebook. (I also have some CDs of the Tolkien Ensemble performing the songs to their own music, one of which has Christopher Lee singing Treebeard.)
Something I learned a while back is that the meeting of the Ents, that race of walking trees, is cheekily meant to represent a faculty meeting, and Treebeard is meant to be Tolkien’s best friend, C.S Lewis, who did have a deep, booming voice like Treebeard’s.
Anyway, happy birthday, Professor! I am off to bed to reread some of your greatest book!
Thus articles Happy Birthday, Tolkien!
that is all articles Happy Birthday, Tolkien! This time, hopefully can provide benefits to you all. Okay, see you in another article post.
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