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Mabel Tolkien, Tolkien's mother, dies in Edgbaston, Birmingham
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Tolkien was born in what is now South Africa
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Mabel Tolkien returns to England with Tolkien and his brother
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Death of Arthur Tolkien, Tolkien's father, in Bloemfontein, now South Africa
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Tolkien's Aunt Beatrice takes the boys in.
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Tolkien obtains a scholarship at Oxford’s Exeter College.
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Tolkien writes to Edith on his 21st birthday, and soon after they become engaged.
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Tolkien writes his first identifiable “Middle-earth” fragment ‘The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star’.
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Ronald and Edith are married in Warwick.
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Tolkien becomes a Battalion Signalling Officer.
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Suffering from trench fever, Tolkien returns to England.
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The Tolkiens return to Oxford. Tolkien obtains employment with the New English Dictionary [Oxford English Dictionary].
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About this time, Tolkien may have written the first sentence of The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit“
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The Hobbit is published. Because of its success, Stanley Unwin subsequently urges Tolkien to write a sequel, which he begins. This is the germ of The Lord of the Rings.
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Publication of The Fellowship of the Ring.
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Publication of The Two Towers.
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Publication of The Return of the King.
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The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is published.
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Death of Edith Tolkien.
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Death of J.R.R. Tolkien from a stomach ulcer.
