Tolkien Gleanings #221
* In Switzerland, the exhibition “In Tolkien’s footsteps”. A wide variety of works, presumably all inspired by Tolkien and Middle-earth, have been placed… “along an easily accessible hiking trail behind the historic village of Blatten” and these form an outdoor ‘walking’ exhibition. From 20th July until 10th August 2024.
* Newly added to the latest Journal of Tolkien Research, the long paper “Holding His Attention: Tolkien and ‘Modern’ Science Fiction”.
* At Signum, an online summer-school course in “The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium”. Now a confirmed course, starting 5th August 2024 and running through the month in eight sessions. Booking now.
* Signum will also be marking three years of their online short-courses, with a showcase event on 16th November 2024. This will be a free online event, open to all.
* New on Archive.org, Period Homes magazine for July 2007. With a three-page photo-feature on a custom-built private museum, which houses a large Tolkien collection including many “books, manuscripts and artifacts.”
* New on YouTube, the July 2024 Update for the Digital Tolkien Project.
* New to me, Rudyard Kipling’s Songs from Books (1913), a large collection of songs drawn from his books up until that time. I’m no expert on the topic, but it’s perhaps evidence that Tolkien was not without forerunners in the heavy inclusion of songs within Edwardian popular / imaginative literature. Note also Kipling’s elaboration of a vividly realised future-world, with various appendices and extra matter appended to his seminal “With the Night Mail” which birthed ‘hard’ science-fiction.
* And finally, an oldie from 2011 but new to me. The tobacco-scented Pipes Magazine on “C.S. Lewis: Novelist, Scholar, Broadcaster – and Pipe Smoker”. His… “shorter pipe is a Tetley’s Lightweight, and the longer pipe is a Cub Foreign”. His favourite… “pipe tobacco blend was Gold Block … also smoked the original Three Nuns”. A quiz-question stumper and ice-breaker follows naturally: “What might Tolkien have understood by the words ‘Tonight I’m packing Three Nuns into my Tetley’s Lightweight, Tollers'”.