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J.R.R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1892 and raised in England after his mother brought him home at age three. Orphaned before he was thirteen — his mother died a devout Catholic convert — Tolkien went on to study Old and Middle English, Germanic languages, Welsh, and Finnish at Oxford. He graduated in 1915, married Edith Bratt before shipping out to the Western Front, and fought in the Battle of the Somme. Nearly all of his closest friends were killed. He contrac...