In which English coastal town did J.R.R. Tolkien die on September 2, 1973?

J.R.R. Tolkien died in Bournemouth on September 2, 1973.

Tolkien was 81 when he died in Bournemouth, a coastal town in Dorset, England. He had been staying at the hotel and home of friends after the death of his wife, Edith Tolkien, in 1971. His death came before the posthumous publication of The Silmarillion, which Christopher Tolkien edited and which appeared in 1977.

Tolkien’s final years followed a long academic and literary career. He had retired from his professorship at Merton College, Oxford, in 1959, though he continued revising writings and corresponding with readers and scholars. By the time of his death, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings had made him internationally famous.

Tolkien and Edith were later buried together in Oxford. Their grave is marked with the names Beren and Lúthien, linking their personal memorial to one of the central love stories in Tolkien’s mythology.