Mabel Suffield Tolkien

Tolkien traced his interest in philology and romance to her, and his awareness of her hard work and suffering for the sake of her sons, especially when she was rejected by her family because of her conversion to Catholicism, left a lasting impact on him, as did her early death.

[1][page needed][2] When Mabel was eighteen, she received a proposal of marriage from Arthur Tolkien, a bank clerk, who was thirteen years her senior.

After staying with her parents, Mabel moved with her sons a cottage near Sarehole Mill, Birmingham, which she rented using the proceeds from Arthur's share in a gold mine and support from her family.

[6] Her family, who were Methodist, disapproved: her father disowned her,[2] and her brother-in-law Walter Incledon, who had been assisting her financially, withdrew his support.

She is credited with a talent and enthusiasm for languages, nature, calligraphy and etymology, which she passed on to Tolkien;[8] he cites her as the origin of his interest in philology and romance: "I am in fact far more of a Suffield (a family deriving from Evesham in Worcestershire), and it is to my mother who taught me (until I obtained a scholarship at the ancient Grammar School in Birmingham) that I owe my tastes for philology, especially of Germanic languages, and for romance.

She moved the family several times to facilitate Tolkien's education, withdrawing him from St Philip's School to tutor him herself when she realised that he was outpacing his classmates.

Your grandmother, to whom you owe so much – for she was a gifted lady of great beauty and wit, greatly stricken by God with grief and suffering, who died in youth (at 34) of a disease hastened by persecution of her faith..."[13] His connection with the West Midlands and his artistic and calligraphic talents (the Suffields were platemakers, engravers, and booksellers, and Mabel taught Tolkien calligraphy) comes from his mother’s side of the family.