About Edith Tolkien
Edith Mary Tolkien (née Bratt; 21 January 1889 – 29 November 1971) was the wife of the academic, philologist, poet, and novelist J. R. R. Tolkien. She served as the inspiration for his fictional Middle-earth characters Lúthien Tinúviel and Arwen Undómiel. 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. Because her "Uncle Jessop", "like many of his age and class, was strongly anti-Catholic", Edith, who feared his explosive temper, at first resisted her fiancé's demands. Viewing Edith as a distraction from Tolkien's schoolwork and bothered by her Anglican religion, he forbade any contact between them until Tolkien became a legal adult at 21. On one occasion she played to us on a very simple old-fashioned gramophone a record she had just bought.
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