Tolkien Gleanings #104.

* Non-subscribers can learn what’s in Amon Hen #300, since Tolkien Gateway now has the TOCs. The 300th issue included, among others… “Memorable Moments in my Fifty Years in the Tolkien Society by Jessica Yates” and “My Father the Artist by Priscilla Tolkien”. I’m uncertain if that last has been seen before, or not.

* A call for papers for the U.S. Hybrid Kalamazoo, 9th-11th May 2024… “The ‘Tolkien at Kalamazoo’ area will be organizing six sessions for the 2024 conference: three are in-person, and three are virtual. The proposal deadline is 15th September.”

* On the University of Maryland YouTube channel, Book Launch: The Battle of Maldon by J.R.R. Tolkien (May 2023)… “Join [editor] Peter Grybauskas as he discusses [the new Maldon book] with Verlyn Flieger and Chip Crane” in a one-hour discussion.

* New on Archive.org to borrow, An Anglo-Saxon and Celtic bibliography (450-1087). Published in 1957 and thus perhaps useful to Tolkien scholars, being a snapshot of the available literature prior to The Lord of the Rings.

* New to me, The spiritual Tolkien milieu: a study of fiction-based religion (2014). The thesis is open-access under Creative Commons Attribution, and the PDFs are chapters to be found in a long sidebar. It finds that the attempt at forming a primary-world “spiritual Tolkien milieu is tiny”, and that these pioneering practitioners appear to focus on the elves.

* And finally… “First edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit found in a charity shop” in the UK. It went to eBay and raised £10,000 for cancer research.