Tolkien Gleanings #222
* New to me, and published without fanfare a few days ago, the new book Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth: Essays on the Habitations of Tolkien’s Legendarium. 13 essays on the topic. There was a call-for-papers exploring Tolkien’s built places, back in 2019 in Amon Hen #279. Then a series of panels on the topic at a Mythcon a few years ago. Essays in the finished book include, among others: “Re-Enchanting Built Spaces: On Dwarves and Dwarven Places”; “Stone Monuments and Imperfect Cultural and Personal Memories in The Lord of the Rings”; and “The Many Faces of Lake-Town”.
* B&W artwork relating to 1981 BBC Radio adaptation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Destined for the BBC’s Radio Times listings magazine, by the look of them.
* More recently newly at the auctioneers, and still for sale, a long letter under the title “Sherlock Holmes letter from 10th January 1947”. Original and signed by Tolkien.
The letter describes Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft as having “quite a sniff of priggery about these two precious gents” and Conan Doyle as “not himself distinguished as a particularly acute thinker”.
The “gents” concerned might instead be Holmes and his creator Doyle, it’s left a little ambiguous. But on balance I think the letter-owner’s description is probably right. Doyle had died in 1930, and he had long been deeply deluded by spiritualist charlatanry. Thus I doubt any Sherlockians will quibble with Tolkien’s other assessment. But evidently Tolkien in 1947 was familiar enough with the Holmes tales to feel able to make his judgements. Did he perhaps re-read Holmes to pass the long nights of fire-watching duty during the Second World War? Just my guess.
Update: the letter sold for £20,000.
* New in the Sage journal IDS, the article “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium as Heterodox Palaeoscience” ($ paywall)…
“… the influence of a range of palaeoscience topics on Tolkien – some of which were outside the mainstream of his time before becoming accepted – are [not] well known. This article synthesises research into the conception of Tolkien’s usage of heterodox palaeoscience in his works, [in order to then] explore the reception of those themes in his fiction.”
* Tolkien scholar David Robbie is launching his new book Great Haywood, Past and Present, People and Places, at Rugeley Public Library on 9th September 2024. “Pre-booking not required. A short talk, followed by Q&A and discussion”. The village of Great Haywood, in mid Staffordshire, was well known to the young Tolkien during the First World War. The talk is part of the nation’s annual Heritage Open Days at various venues, which will take place in early September.
* From the Italian Tolkien scholars, a new article in Italian on “Tolkien in Bulgaria”, this being a profile of Lyubomir Nikolov who translated The Lord of the Rings. This follows this week’s news from Radio Bulgaria that “Bulgarian writer Lyubomir Nikolov has passed away at 74”.
* And finally, The Lord of the Rings is 70 years old tomorrow. Imagine popping down to the local bookshop, on what the untampered original weather records show was a dry and pleasantly cool summer day, at the end of July 1954. A Thursday appropriately enough (the day being named after the thunder-god Thor, as you’ll recall). Then strolling home with a crisp newly-printed Fellowship hardback neatly wrapped in brown paper.