Today, January 3rd, is the birthday of Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, b. 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa, to English parents Mabel and Arthur Tolkien. Tolkien grew up to be a professor of philology and Anglo-Saxon literature, and the author of beloved and best-selling fantasy books: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Silmarillion, and other minor works.

Tolkien’s influences: Beowulf, Norse Sagas, the Nibelungenlied, Homer, Sophocles, the Finnish and Karelian Kalevala, Catholicism and Christian theology in general, She by Rider Haggard, Edward Wyke-Smith’s Marvellous Land of the Snergs, poet and artist William Morris, W.H. Auden, and of course, The Inklings, especially Tolkien’s friend, C.S. Lewis.

Influenced by Tolkien: C.S. Lewis, Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, Christopher Paolini, JK Rowling, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (creators of Dungeons and Dragons), Peter Jackson, Carol Kendall, Alan Garner, Lloyd Alexander, Peter Beagle, Jane Yolen, Andre Norton, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and probably almost any other modern fantasy author, including those who write that they are deliberately reacting against Tolkienesque high fantasy (i.e. China Mieville).

To celebrate Tolkien’s 119th birthday, I read The Children of Hurin, a book I’ve had on my shelf for about a year. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, and I guess this birthday is it. Children of Hurin is a story from The Silmarillion, adapted and edited to book form by Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien. The language in the book, like that of The Silmarillion, is formal, somewhat stilted, and quite beautiful. The story is a tragedy, the doomed lives and loves of the children of a hero named Hurin. Hurin’s children, Turin and Nienor, are cursed because of the hatred that Morgoth has for their father. Just as the children of Adam are cursed because of Adam’s sin and the hatred of Satan for our race, the children of Hurin make their own choices, and yet are doomed to fall under the curse of Morgoth.

JRR Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. Tolkien’s tombstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, bears the following inscription:

Edith Mary Tolkien
Luthien
1889-1971
John Ronald
Reuel Tolkien
Beren
1892-1973

Luthien and Beren are two legendary lovers from Tolkien’s epic saga, The Silmarillion.