it fucks me up that tolkien only died in 1973. dude has the vibe of a victorian scholar who wrote all his manuscripts by candlelight but then you look him up and realise that he knew what color tv was. what the fuck.
dude was born in 1892. Wild.
lets put his life into some context:
if he was born in 1892:
at 1900 he’s 8 years old. His parents may have read him Jules Vern literature and the author himself is still alive.
at 1910 he’s a man now at 18, along with HP Lovecraft who turns 20, however Hemmingway is still 11 and Scot Fitzgerald is still 14. His parents probably raised him on ragtime popularized by names like Scott Joplin, but the state of jazz is evolving as artists like Irving Berlin are just about to hit the market in America. Movie theatres are still called Nickelodeons and still copy-righted by Edison. Mary Pictford is about to launch her medium re-defining career in moving pictures. She’s also the only adult in this list to be the same age as Tolkien
at 1920 he’s 28 and has been married for 4 years and completed military service in the Great War and has become the youngest professor at the University of Leeds. Einstien has been named Foriegn Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1930 Snow White is released as Disney’s first feature length movie. Pre-sliced bread has been available for 2 years. Tolkien is 38 and moving pictures now talk. Ann Frank and Martin Luther King Jr are both 1. Tolkien has finished but not publish a translation of Beowulf
1940 he’s 48 and is training to be a codebreaker in the upcoming conflict. of course, Hitler is in the middle of a war. In other news, Dr. AB Xuma is elected President-General of the African National Congress.
1950 he’s 58 and has been the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature for 5 years
1960 he’s 68 and has seen man land on the moon
1970, color tv’s are being released. Tolkien would die 2 years before personal computers hit the market for the first time
