page_title: Tolkien family
section_title: Mabel Tolkien
hierarchical_section_title: Tolkien family / Notable members / Mabel Tolkien
caption_attribution_description: English: St Peter's Catholic Church, Bromsgrove: grave of Mabel Tolkien (née Suffield, 1870–1904), the mother of J. R. R. Tolkien.
context_page_description: The Tolkien family is an English family of German descent whose best-known member is J. R. R. Tolkien, Oxford academic and author of the fantasy books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
  The Tolkien family originated in the East Prussian town Kreuzburg near Königsberg, where the Tolkien name is attested since the 16th century. The verified paternal line of J. R. R. Tolkien starts with Michel Tolkien, born around 1620 in Kreuzburg. Michel's son Christianus Tolkien was a wealthy miller in Kreuzburg. His son Christian Tolkien moved from Kreuzburg to nearby Danzig, and his two sons Daniel Gottlieb Tolkien and Johann Benjamin Tolkien emigrated to London in the 1770s, and became the ancestors of the English family. The family first appears in English records in 1777. In 1792 John Benjamin Tolkien and William Gravell took over the Erdley Norton manufacture in London, which from then on sold clocks and watches under the name Gravell & Tolkien. Daniel Gottlieb obtained British citizenship in 1794, but John Benjamin apparently never became a British citizen. Their German nephew Daniel Gottlieb Bergmann also joined them in London.
context_section_description: Mabel Tolkien, born Suffield (1870 – 14 November 1904) was the mother of J. R. R. Tolkien.
  Her parents, John Suffield and Emily Jane Sparrow, lived in Stirling Road, Birmingham and owned a shop in the city centre. The Suffield family had a business in a building called Lamb House since 1812. From 1812 William Suffield ran a book and stationery shop there; Tolkien's great-grandfather, also John Suffield, was there from 1826 with a drapery and hosiery business.
  Her husband Arthur Tolkien's death in South Africa in 1896 left her and their two young sons without a source of income. At first, they lived with her parents in Birmingham, then moved to Sarehole (now in Hall Green), then a Worcestershire village, later annexed to Birmingham.
  Mabel tutored her two sons, and J. R. R. (or Ronald, as he was known in the family) was a keen pupil. She taught him a great deal of botany, and she awakened in her son the enjoyment of the look and feel of plants. But his favourite lessons were those concerning languages, and his mother taught him the rudiments of Latin very early. She also taught him how to write, and her ornate script influenced her son's handwriting in his later life.
  Mabel Tolkien converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900 despite vehement protests by her Baptist family who then stopped all financial assistance to her. She died of acute complications of diabetes in 1904 (at about 34 years of age, about as long as a person with diabetes mellitus type 1 could live with no treatment – insulin was not discovered until two decades later), when Tolkien was twelve, at Fern Cottage in Rednal, which they were then renting. For the rest of his life Tolkien felt that she had become a martyr for her faith, which had a profound effect on his own Catholic beliefs.
caption: St Peter's Catholic Church, Bromsgrove: grave of Mabel Tolkien (1870–1904)
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