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 wrote to her, asking her to marry him. 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 Mythology , Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar , and forsook her Immortality for her love of Beren.

REFERENCE

, 1977. ISBN 0-04-928037-6.

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Edith Bratt