J. R. R. Tolkien Trivia
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98 free J. R. R. Tolkien trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This J. R. R. Tolkien trivia quiz is about the man rather than Middle-earth: for the books themselves see our Lord of the Rings and Hobbit quizzes. It starts in Bloemfontein with a bank-manager father, a baboon spider and a mother who taught him Latin and botany before dying of diabetes at 34, then follows him through Sarehole and Bag End, the Birmingham Oratory priest who became his guardian, the invented languages of his teens, the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, and the forbidden courtship of Edith Bratt that resumed the night he turned 21. The second half covers Oxford, the Somme and the trench fever that sent him home, the school friends who did not come back, the letter W at the Oxford English Dictionary, Leeds, the Beowulf lecture that began with a shout of 'Hwæt!', the schoolgirl-free tutoring at the women's colleges, the Hobbit that reached a publisher by accident, the near-miss as a wartime codebreaker, the Inklings, C. S. Lewis's Nobel nomination, the flight from fans to Bournemouth, the Jerusalem Bible, and the grave at Wolvercote marked Beren and Lúthien. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our C. S. Lewis, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit quizzes next.
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Q 01In which city was J. R. R. Tolkien born in 1892?
Bloemfontein
Bloemfontein was where his father Arthur managed a bank branch; Arthur died there of rheumatic fever in 1896 while his wife and sons were visiting England, so the family settled near Birmingham.
Q 02What bit the infant Tolkien in the garden in South Africa?
A large baboon spider
As a toddler Tolkien was bitten by a large baboon spider in the family garden in South Africa; he later said he had no memory of it, though readers see the bite echoed in Shelob and the spiders of Mirkwood.
Q 03Tolkien's aunt Jane's farm gave its name to which place in his fiction?
Bag End
Bag End was the local name of his aunt Jane Neave's farm at Dormston, Worcestershire, which Tolkien visited; he seems to have borrowed only the name, since the real Bag End is an old farmhouse that looks little like a hobbit-hole.
Q 04Which children's book did the young Tolkien dislike?
Treasure Island
Treasure Island and The Pied Piper left the young Tolkien cold, and Alice merely amused him; what he loved were George MacDonald's fantasies and, above all, Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.
Q 05Tolkien's mother Mabel died in 1904 of what, when he was 12?
Acute diabetes
Mabel Tolkien died of acute diabetes in November 1904, aged 34, when insulin treatment was nearly two decades away; her family had cut off support after she became a Catholic in 1900.
Q 06Who became guardian of the orphaned Tolkien brothers?
Father Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory
Father Francis Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory became guardian under Mabel's will and topped up the boys' meagre inheritance from his family's sherry business; Tolkien said he 'first learned charity and forgiveness' from him.
Q 07Tolkien's first encounter with an invented language was Animalic, created by whom?
His cousins Mary and Marjorie Incledon
Animalic was invented by his cousins Mary and Marjorie Incledon, built mostly from English animal names; Tolkien and Mary then made Nevbosh, and he went on to his own Naffarin.
Q 08What did the initials of Tolkien's semi-secret school group, the T.C.B.S., stand for?
Tea Club and Barrovian Society
T.C.B.S. stood for Tea Club and Barrovian Society, after the tea the boys brewed in the school library and later drank at Barrow's Stores; two of its core members were killed in 1916.
Q 09Tolkien said Bilbo's crossing of the Misty Mountains was based on his own 1911 hike where?
The Swiss Alps
In summer 1911 Tolkien's party of 12 walked through the Swiss Alps from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen, Mürren and the Aletsch glacier; he said the Silberhorn became 'the Silvertine of my dreams'.
Q 10Where at Oxford did Tolkien study from 1911, graduating with first-class honours in 1915?
Exeter College
Tolkien went up to Exeter College, Oxford, in October 1911, started in Classics and switched in 1913 to English Language and Literature, taking first-class honours in 1915.
Q 11How did the teenage Tolkien and Edith Bratt amuse themselves in Birmingham teashops?
Throwing sugar lumps into passers-by's hats
Throwing sugar lumps into passers-by's hats from a teashop balcony, the pair moved to the next table whenever the bowl was empty; both were orphans, and by summer 1909 they had decided they were in love.
Q 12When Tolkien proposed at 21, what had Edith already done?
Got engaged
Edith had got engaged to another man, George Field, believing Tolkien had forgotten her during the three years his guardian kept them apart; within a week she gave back Field's ring and accepted Tolkien.
Q 13What was Tolkien doing when he scribbled 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'?
Q 21Tolkien's first civilian job after the war was working on which letter of the Oxford English Dictionary?
W
W: Tolkien's entries ran from waggle to warlock, and he struggled mightily over walrus; he later said he 'learned more in those two years than in any other equal period of my life'.
Q 22Which northern English university appointed Tolkien its Reader in English Language in 1920?
Leeds
Leeds made Tolkien Reader in English Language in 1920 and a professor four years later; to amuse his students there he wrote songs, several of them in long-dead languages, to traditional English tunes.
Q 23Tolkien returned to Oxford in 1925 as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of what?
Anglo-Saxon
Marking exam papers
Marking exam papers, Tolkien found a page that a candidate had left blank and wrote the line on it on impulse; only afterwards did he set about finding out what a hobbit was.
Q 14Tolkien and Edith married in March 1916 at a Catholic church in which Midlands castle town?
Warwick
They married on 22 March 1916 at St Mary Immaculate, the Catholic church in Warwick, where Edith had moved in 1913; Tolkien admired her for marrying a man with no job, little money and a war ahead.
Q 15Tolkien was commissioned in 1915 into which regiment?
The Lancashire Fusiliers
The Lancashire Fusiliers made Tolkien signals officer of their 11th Battalion; he felt an affinity for his men from Lancashire's mining and mill towns, though army protocol barred officers from befriending other ranks.
Q 16How did Tolkien let Edith track his movements in France despite army censorship?
A code of dots in his letters
Army censors barred place names, so Tolkien worked out a code of dots in his letters that told Edith where he was; she followed his movements on a map of the Western Front.
Q 17Which illness sent Tolkien home from the Somme in November 1916?
Trench fever
Trench fever, spread by body lice, struck Tolkien on 27 October 1916 after his battalion's attack on Regina Trench; he was shipped to England on 8 November and never returned to the front.
Q 18Which T.C.B.S. member was killed leading his men on the first day of the Somme?
Rob Gilson
Rob Gilson was killed on 1 July 1916 leading his men; Geoffrey Bache Smith was fatally wounded by a shell later that year, so two of the four close friends were dead before 1916 was out.
Q 19While recovering in Staffordshire, Tolkien began writing what, starting with The Fall of Gondolin?
The Book of Lost Tales
The Book of Lost Tales, begun with The Fall of Gondolin while he convalesced, was Tolkien's attempt at a mythology for England; he never finished it, but its stories grew into The Silmarillion.
Q 20Edith's dance in a hemlock glade at Roos, Yorkshire, inspired which tale?
Beren and Lúthien
Beren and Lúthien: Tolkien wrote after Edith's death that the tale began with her dancing in that glade, and their shared headstone names her Lúthien and him Beren.
Anglo-Saxon: Tolkien won the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair at 33, chosen over Kenneth Sisam, who had once taught him, and held it for twenty years, during which he wrote The Hobbit.
Q 24Which 1936 Tolkien lecture became a turning point in scholarship on an Old English poem?
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, his 1936 Gollancz Memorial Lecture to the British Academy, argued the monsters were central to the poem's art; his own prose Beowulf translation, finished in 1926, appeared only in 2014.
Q 25In 1939 Tolkien was earmarked for what wartime role?
Codebreaker at the Government Code and Cypher School
Codebreaker at the Government Code and Cypher School: Tolkien was among the academics hand-picked for a course at its London headquarters in March 1939, but in the end he never joined.
Q 26Which publisher asked Tolkien for a sequel to The Hobbit?
Allen & Unwin
Allen & Unwin wanted more about hobbits; The Lord of the Rings took Tolkien twelve years, and after a dispute he offered it to a rival firm, Collins, before Allen & Unwin published it in 1954–55.
Q 27Tolkien wrote his children illustrated letters as whom?
Father Christmas
Father Christmas wrote to John, Michael, Christopher and Priscilla each December from 1920 to 1943, with news of the trouble-prone North Polar Bear; the letters were published in 1976.
Q 28Who nominated Tolkien for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961?
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis, his friend and fellow Inkling, put Tolkien forward, but the Nobel jury judged that his prose 'has not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality'; the 1961 prize went to Ivo Andrić.
Q 29In retirement Tolkien left Oxford for which seaside resort, where Edith thrived and he pined for his friends?
Bournemouth
Bournemouth gave Edith the society she enjoyed and put distance between Tolkien and his fans, but he missed the Inklings; after she died in 1971 he moved back to Oxford.
Q 30Which book of the Bible did Tolkien translate for The Jerusalem Bible (1966)?
Jonah
He had been assigned much more but other commitments left him time only for Jonah and some criticism of colleagues' work.