In Memoriam: Maggie Burns

Maggie Burns (1954–2012) was a librarian working in the Local Studies and History department of the Central Library in Birmingham, England. She was a graduate of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. A prolific creator of library displays and web pages related to the history and growth of Birmingham, she became expert on Tolkien’s early life there, particularly his time at King Edward’s School, and on the local family history of earlier generations of the Tolkien and Suffield families. In addition to displays on these matters for the library and for Tolkien conferences, she wrote a number of articles for the Tolkien Society. Notable among these are “John Ronald’s Schooldays” and an extensively annotated edition of Tolkien’s school poem “The Battle of the Eastern Field,” both in Mallorn in 2008, and further articles in Mallorn in 2010 noted in the present volume’s “Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies.” At the time of her death she had done a large amount of work on a book on the Tolkien and Suffield families in Birmingham.