John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973), was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in South Africa) to Mabel (née Suffield) and Arthur Reuel Tolkien, an English bank manager. His parents left England when his father was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel, who was born on 17 February 1894.

At the age of three, Tolkien's father died of rheumatic fever, and his mother took he and his brother to live with her parents, John and Edith Jane Suffield, in Kings Heath, Birmingham. His maternal grandparents were Baptists and owned a shop in the city center.

The Suffield family had run various businesses out of the same building, called Lamb House, since the early 19th century. From 1812 Tolkien's great-great-grandfather William Suffield had a book and stationery shop there; from 1826 Tolkien's great-grandfather, also named John Suffield, had a drapery and hosiery business there.

In 1904, when Tolkien was 12, his mother, Mabel Tolkien, died of acute diabetes at Fern Cottage in Rednal, which she was then renting. Prior to her death, she had assigned the guardianship of her sons to Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory, who was assigned to bring them up as good Catholics.

Tolkien married Edith Mary Bratt, whom he met at the age of 16, at St. Mary Immaculate Roman Catholic Church, Warwick, on 22 March 1916. The Tolkiens had four children: John Francis Reuel, Michael Hilary Reuel, Christopher John Reuel and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel.