In later years Tolkien mourned the destruction of much of the ‘Little Kingdom’ – that is, the countryside around Oxford. In ?March 1945 he wrote to Stanley Unwin: ‘The heart has gone out of the Little Kingdom, and the woods and plains are aerodromes and bomb-practice targets’ (Letters, p. 113).
Tolkien also associated Tom Bombadil, of *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and The Lord of the Rings, partly with Oxfordshire. On 16 December 1937, in a letter to Stanley Unwin, he called Tom Bombadil ‘the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside’; and on 25 June 1962 he wrote to *Pauline Baynes, who was to illustrate *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book, that ‘one might say that the “landscape” envisaged is southern English, and in particular South Oxfordshire and Berkshire’ (quoted in Sotheby’s, Valuable Printed Books and Manuscripts, London, 13 December 2001, p. 260).
For several years after the Second World War Michael Tolkien was a master at the Oratory School at Woodcote in southern Oxfordshire. At times in July and early August 1948, and from 14 August to 14 September of that year, Tolkien went into ‘retreat’ at Michael’s home, then Payables Farm in Woodcote, where he ‘succeeded at last in bringing the “Lord of the Rings” to a successful conclusion’ (letter to Hugh Brogan, 31 October 1948, Letters, p. 131). Michael and his family later moved to a house on the School grounds. On 29 August 1952 Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin: ‘I am now going to devote some days to correcting [The Lord of the Rings] finally. For this purpose, I am retiring tomorrow from the noise and stench of Holywell [see above, Tolkien’s Oxford homes] to my son’s cottage on Chilton-top while he is away with his children: Chapel Cottage, the Oratory School, Woodcote, near Reading’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). In a letter to his grandson, Michael George, on 24 September 1952 Tolkien wrote: ‘I enjoyed staying in your house; and I used your desk’ (British Library MS Add. 71657).
Useful sources for the present entry include Christopher Hibbert, ed., The Encyclopædia of Oxford (1988); Derek S. Honey, An Encyclopaedia of Oxford Pubs, Inns and Taverns (1998); Philip Atkins and Michael Johnson, A New Guidebook to the Heart of Oxford (1999); and Geoffrey Tyack, Oxford and Cambridge (the Blue Guide to this region, 5th edn., 1999). Primarily visual information about Oxford and its environs is provided by Oxford Then & Now: From the Henry Taunt Collection by Malcolm Graham and Laurence Waters (2006), which contains photographs of Oxford between 1858 and 1922, juxtaposed with photos of more or less the same view as it is today; Robert S. Blackham, Tolkien’s Oxford (2008), includes maps as well as both historical and modern photographs; and Harry Lee Poe, The Inklings of Oxford: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Their Friends, photography by James Ray Veneman (2009).
Oxford, University of. The University of Oxford was of paramount importance in Tolkien’s life, with only brief interruptions, from his days as an undergraduate at Exeter College until his death. Colleges and other features of the University (and of the city of Oxford and surrounding areas) are considered in this volume under *Oxford and environs. The following notes on the University, its institutions and administration, though expressed usually in the present tense (to harmonize with quotations from contemporary sources), are intended to be generally applicable to Oxford as it was when Tolkien was an undergraduate or professor, and do not necessarily take account of reforms and changes made since his retirement in 1959.
HISTORY
The origins of the University of Oxford can be traced to the late twelfth century, when groups of scholars began to gather in Oxford around masters who lectured on Canon and Roman Law, Liberal Arts, and Theology. Some scholars lived in a house or ‘academic hall’ hired by the master. The young university received royal support and ‘prospered, gradually gaining a large measure of independence under a Chancellor elected by the masters, whose interests were represented by the Proctors and whose collective decisions were made known in Convocation’ (The Encyclopædia of Oxford, ed. Christopher Hibbert (1988), p. 471). During the thirteenth century the first colleges were founded, including University (1249), Balliol (1263), Merton (1264), and Exeter (1314). These gradually replaced the less organized ‘academic halls’. The Reformation brought many changes, including the confiscation of the property of some Oxford institutions linked to religious communities such as the Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Benedictines, as well as changes in curriculum. By the seventeenth century most students belonged to a college, and a smaller number to the few remaining academic halls; but the University continued to teach and examine.
From the end of the eighteenth century various reforms have been made, often as a result of special commissions intended to make the organization of the University and the colleges more democratic and to abolish vested interests; to raise academic standards and make the syllabi of the various schools more appropriate to national needs; and to broaden the student body by removing restrictions by religion or gender, and providing financial assistance for those whose families could not afford the cost of a university education. Much reform has also been directed at ensuring the proper use of the colleges’ income from property and endowments, and strengthening the role of the professoriate, both as a teaching body and in the government of the University.
From 1874 fellows – elected senior members of a college – were allowed to marry, and many became only nominally resident. During the second half of the nineteenth century women students were admitted to lectures and the first women’s colleges were founded: Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville, both in 1879. Although women students were allowed to sit some University examinations in 1884, and from 1894 even the B.A. final examination, it was not until 1920 that they were allowed to matriculate, become full members of the University, and receive degrees.
Oxford (like *Cambridge) differs from other British (and American) universities in that its colleges, established from the medieval period onwards, have remained largely independent self-governing bodies within the University, and ‘membership in [the University] is acquired and retained only through membership in a College, Hall or other recognized society, which is itself a federated member of the University’ (L.A. Crosby, ‘The Organization of the University and Colleges’, Oxford of Today: A Manual for Prospective Rhodes Scholars (1927), p. 29). The colleges have charitable status and elect their own (often resident) fellows, who are responsible for the administration of the college and of its property. When Tolkien went up to Oxford in 1911 there were twenty-five colleges, varying in size and wealth. By the time he retired in 1959 there were twenty-nine, but three of the additions (St Edmund Hall, St Anne’s, and St Peter’s) had existed in other guises prior to 1911. After the Second World War the number of undergraduates at Oxford, and of graduates reading for higher degrees, increased dramatically, many of them from less privileged backgrounds as a result of the introduction of state aid for higher education.
The University is responsible for various functions which are distinct from those of the colleges:
First, to examine and to grant degrees, and for this purpose to lay down courses, syllabuses, and regulations, and