J.R.R. Tolkien, the legendary author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, lived a love story that felt straight out of Middle-earth. At sixteen, he met Edith Bratt, a talented pianist and fellow orphan, but his guardian forbade them from seeing each other until he turned twenty-one. Tolkien waited in silence for years before writing to her—only to find she was engaged. Moved by his devotion, Edith ended her engagement and reunited with him. They married in 1916 and shared 55 years of love. W

In June of 1916, J.R.R. Tolkien went to war. He was 24 years old, a 2nd Lieutenant in the 11th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, freshly married to his sweetheart Edith. They spent the night before his departure at a hotel in Birmingham. “Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute,” he later wrote. “Parting from my wife then... it was like a death.” Rob Gilson was one of Tolkien’s closest friends. They had met at King Edward’s School in Birmingham and formed a tight circle with