Timeline Monday 29 November 1971

Events on Monday 29 November 1971 1

• 1971 Edith Tolkien dies — Lúthien Edith Mary Tolkien dies on 29 November 1971, aged 82. On her gravestone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, Tolkien has inscribed the name 'Lúthien' — after the Elvish maiden who gives up her immortality for love of the mortal Beren. The inscription makes explicit what Tolkien had always believed: that his own story with Edith was the primary story of his mythology. He writes to his son Christopher: 'She was (and knew she was) my Lúthien.' He returns to Oxford after Edith's death and is elected an Honorary Fellow of Merton College.