Edith Tolkien was the real Lúthien, says Tolkien's own letter

Lúthien is a very personal character for J.R.R. Tolkien. In a 1972 letter to his son Christopher, written after Edith's death, Tolkien said so plainly: "I never called Edith Lúthien, but she was the source of the story."

Middle-earth has vampires, werewolves and giant spiders. I've been reading Tolkien since I was about 10.

Lúthien sings Morgoth to sleep so Beren can take a Silmaril

In the tale of Beren and Lúthien, Lúthien goes into Morgoth's throne room and sings and dances before him. She keeps going until Morgoth and his whole court fall asleep. While they sleep, Beren cuts a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown.

She has already rescued Beren from Sauron. She has got into Angband and sung the original Dark Lord to sleep, while Beren is wandering around taking the jewel.

Tolkien and Edith's secret meetings near the Lickey Hills

This year I've been visiting the places Tolkien grew up in, particularly around Worcestershire. Earlier in the year I visited the Lickey Hills, where he spent some time growing up and where he later went with Edith, who would become his wife.

Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien has a passage in its second part about a bicycle trip to the Lickey Hills in 1909. Tolkien and Edith had cycled to Rednal together, and they were secretly meeting for tea. Through gossip in the local community, word got back to Tolkien's guardian, Father Francis.

Father Francis wasn't impressed with the romance distracting Tolkien from his studies. It didn't go well, and for a period of time the couple were separated.

I also visited a local museum for its Tolkien exhibition, where I saw a beautiful representation of Lúthien in the form of some artwork.

Tolkien's 1972 letter: "for she was my Lúthien"

I think it's because Edith was Tolkien's inspiration for Lúthien that he wrote to Christopher about her dancing in a woodland glade in Yorkshire. The letter dates from 1972, after Edith had died. Tolkien was arranging her grave and set out the inscription he wanted: "Edith Mary Tolkien, 1889 to 1971, Lúthien, for she was my Lúthien."

He admitted he had begun the letter under great emotion and regret, and that he was increasingly afflicted by an overwhelming sense of bereavement. He hoped none of his children would feel the use of the name was a sentimental fancy, and said it was not comparable to quoting pet names in obituaries.

The woodland glade at Roos where the story began

Tolkien explained that the story was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire. In 1917 he was briefly in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison there, and Edith was able to live with him for a while. "In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you could have seen them and she could sing and dance," he wrote.

But, he said, the story had gone crooked, and he was left behind, unable to plead before the inexorable Mandos. He told Christopher he would probably never write an ordered biography, because it was against his nature, which expressed the things he felt most deeply in tales and myths.

Instead he wanted someone close to him to know what records do not record: the dreadful sufferings of their childhood, from which he and Edith rescued one another but could not wholly heal, and the sufferings they endured after their love began. These, he felt, might make the lapses and darkness that at times marred their lives understandable, while never touching their depths or dimming their memories of youthful love. They still met in that woodland glade, he wrote, and went hand in hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before their last parting.

I think there is something so lovely behind their love story, and behind Beren and Lúthien too. Lúthien rescues Beren from Sauron and sings the original Dark Lord to sleep, and the woman who inspired her was, in Tolkien's own words, his Lúthien.