Fun Fact: After being forbidden from speaking with Edith since 1908, Tolkien wrote to her on his 21st birthday in 1913 declaring that his love for her still stood. Edith, estatic, left the man she was promised to for Tolkien. The two were promptly engaged and, three years later, in 1916, married. His wife would later become immortalized as Lúthien in his Middle Earth books.