Edith Tolkien

Edith Mary Tolkien (21 January 1889 – 29 November 1971; née Bratt), was the wife and muse of novelist J. R. R. Tolkien. She is best known as the inspiration for his fictional characters Lúthien Tinúviel and Arwen Evenstar.

Edith Bratt was born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, on 21 January 1889. Her mother, Frances Bratt, was 30-years old, unmarried, and was the daughter of a local shoe- and bootmaker.

According to Humphrey Carpenter, Frances Bratt never married and the name of Edith's father is not listed on her birth certificate. Even so, Frances is reported to have always preserved a photograph of her daughter's father and this name was known within the Bratt family. Edith, however, was always deeply conscious of having been conceived illegitimately and never told her own children the name of their grandfather.

Subsequent research has identified Edith's father as Birmingham paper dealer Alfred Frederick Warrilow, who had previously employed Frances Bratt as governess to his daughter, Nellie Warrilow. When Warrilow died in 1891, he named Edith as his sole executrix in his will.

Edith was brought up in Handsworth, a suburb of Birmingham, by her mother and also her cousin, Jenny Grove (related to Sir George Grove). According to Humphrey Carpenter, the circumstances of Edith's birth were a regular subject of neighborhood gossip.

Frances Bratt died when her daughter was 14 and Edith was sent to the Dresden House boarding school in Evesham. The school was run by the Watts sisters, who had studied music in Dresden. Although the school had a very "strict regime", Edith was always to remember it fondly. It was at the Dresden House School where Edith "first developed her great love, and talent, for playing the piano."

Following school, Edith was expected to become a concert pianist or at the very least a piano teacher. While he considered how to proceed, Edith's guardian, solicitor Stephen Gateley, found her rooms at Mrs. Faulkner's boarding house at 37 Duchess Road, Birmingham.

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