John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's early life was marked by loss. Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on January 3, 1892, Tolkien lost his father at age four. Life in industrial Birmingham, England, contrasted dramatically with his exotic birthplace. When the family converted to Catholicism, a faith that Tolkien followed throughout his life, relationships with his extended family suffered. When he was twelve, his mother died of diabetes, at the time an untreatable illness. At sixteen, Tolkien met Edith Bratt, a fellow orphan who would later become his wife, but his guardian, Father Francis Morgan, ordered him not to see her until his twenty-first birthday.
Tolkien earned a scholarship to Oxford University and enrolled in 1911, where he studied English language and literature. When he turned 21 in 1913, Tolkien contacted Edith and renewed their romance. In 1915, he completed his studies with a First, the highest level of achievement, and on March 22, 1916, he and Edith were married. War had broken out on the continent while Tolkien was at Oxford, and after graduation, he took up his commission in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He survived the Battle of the Somme, one of the harshest battles of World War I, and returned to England suffering from trench fever. Millions of young men, including many of Tolkien's boyhood friends, did not come home.
