But on the evening of his 21st birthday, Ronald wrote Edith a letter, declaring that his love towards her had never faltered and asking her to marry him. Meanwhile, the young woman moved to Cheltenham and lived with a family friend. He only sent her one letter, but his Father Morgan found out and threatened Tolkien that he would put a stop to his university career.ġ892 Christmas card with a colored photo of the Tolkien family in Bloemfontein, sent to relatives in Birmingham, Englandįor five years Tolkien and Edith did not communicate. The young student obeyed his guardian and ceased all contact with the woman he loved. With Tolkien being raised as a Catholic, Father Morgan forbade Tolkien to talk, meet, or have any kind of communication with Edith until he turned 21. He wasn't thrilled that his protege was dating a Protestant woman who was three years older than him. Tolkien was failing his exams and his legal guardian, Father Morgan, saw Edith as the reason for this. One year later, the couple was officially in love. Both being orphans, Edith and Ronald could understand each other perfectly They hang out a lot, taking walks and talking.

Tolkien and his brother moved into a boarding house in Edgbaston, where Edith already lived. There’s an interesting story to be told about the way Tolkien proposed to Edith. Edith was J.R.R Tolkien's inspiration for the characters of Arwen Undomiel and Luthien from his books The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. The couple had four children: three sons and one daughter. They were married for 55 years, with Edith following Tolkien wherever his life took him. “To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, has told the story in his father’s own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed.By all accounts, famous writer John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and his wife, Edith, had a close and happy marriage.

“That story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history,” said the publisher. It is an “essential element in the evolution” of The Silmarillion, said the publisher, and the forthcoming book is the author’s son Christopher Tolkien’s attempt “to extract the story of Beren and Lúthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded”. The story was written in 1917 after Tolkien returned from the Somme, where he had served as a signaller. The author’s wife, Edith, has the name Lúthien on her grave, while Tolkien himself, who died two years later in 1973, has Beren’s.

And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien,” writes Tolkien in his major work, The Silmarillion. “Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures.

Edith tolkien luthien