Edith Tolkien

File:Edith bratt.jpg

Edith Bratt

Edith Mary Tolkien née Bratt (January 21, 1889 – November 29, 1971) was the wife of writer J. R. R. Tolkien and the inspiration for his fictional character Lúthien.

Edith Bratt was born in Gloucestershire, the daughter of Frances Bratt. She was brought up in Handsworth, a suburb of Birmingham, by her mother and also her cousin, Jennie Grove (related to Sir George Grove).

Tolkien and Edith first met in 1908, when Edith was 19 years old (Tolkien was 16 years old) and they were both orphans living in the same boarding house. A relationship formed between the two; but this relationship became known to Tolkien's guardian, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, who forbade Tolkien to meet Edith until he was 21.

Tolkien obeyed this instruction to the letter; on the evening of his twenty-first birthday he telephoned to ask her to be his bride. The pair married on March 22, 1916, in a small Roman Catholic church in Warwickshire, England, shortly before Tolkien had to leave for France, where he partook in the Battle of the Somme. After the war, she became a homemaker and raised four children while her husband pursued his professional career at the universities of Leeds and Oxford.

Edith Tolkien died on November 29, 1971 at the age of 82, and was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford; Tolkien was buried with her when he died two years later.

Below the names on their grave are the names of the characters of Beren and Lúthien: in Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology, Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar, and forsook her immortality for her love of Beren.

Reference

• Carpenter, Humphrey, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. ISBN 0-04-928037-6.