J. R. R. Tolkien was born January 3, 1892 in South Africa, where his father was a banker. His father died in 1896 while Tolkien, his mother, and younger brother were visiting family in England. To economize, his mother moved the family to a village near Birmingham where she began Tolkien's education in French, German, and Latin, as well as botany and drawing. Here Tolkien fell in love with the English countryside. Mother and sons were received into the Catholic church in 1900. Tolkien was deeply religious; beneath the surface of the Lord of the Rings is a deep sense of God's providence. His mother died when Tolkien was eleven. They had moved back and forth from country to city, but her death meant a final move into the industrial city of Birmingham. There, at sixteen, he met his future wife, Edith Bratt. His guardian, worried by an infatuation in...