Tolkien Gleanings #254

* The open-access Journal of Tolkien Research is seeking peer reviewers, able to review between nine and twelve articles per year.

* Newly listed on Amazon UK, Proceedings of the Tolkien 2019 Conference, for publication as a 610-page book and ebook at the end of February 2025. The event was a major five-day Tolkien conference in Birmingham. I filleted the PDF programme (now vanished) when it appeared and noted interesting items.

* A “free exhibition of tapestries from the world of Tolkien” at the College des Bernardins, Paris. Fifteen of the Aubusson tapestries will be on display in the College’s mediaeval vaults. Running 21st March to 18th May 2025.

* The Church Times has a profile interview with the creator of the new book The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien.

* I somehow missed the news of Visualizing Camelot, which was a 350-item university gallery exhibition surveying the uses of King Arthur in popular culture. The show was developed by subject-expert curators who were able to draw on specialist American and British collections of such material. The free exhibition venue appears to have been rather remote (on Lake Ontario, very near the US/Canada border) and is now over. The show was however co-organised with Bangor University in North Wales, so I guess there may be a possibility it might pop up in the UK in summer 2026? In the meanwhile, there’s a substantial website. Also a 134-page hardback catalogue with a detailed survey-essay of the topic, yet even I can’t discover where one might order this online. Possibly the book was only available to buy at the exhibition?

* Copyright Literacy brings a link to a useful new survey of the state-of-play in the UK for galleries, museums and public domain images. This is in the light of the recent UK legal ruling that there can be no copyright in digital images of 2D out-of-copyright visual works. The article’s table shows which museums are still open to legal action, and which are safely following the law. The matter is especially relevant to scholars who require pictures for use in presentations, articles and books.

* Here is another item useful for scholars. Especially those fed up with the grinding slowless of Google Maps, as it loads up all its junk. For simple “where the heck is Little Puddling?” queries, of the sort historians often make, try Google Maps Ultralite with Labels and enjoy blistering load speed and silky-smooth zooming. It does however lack a measurement tool for distances, for those needing to know how many miles might lie between Little Puddling and Greater Puddling.

* New on Archive.org, a scan of the 55-page Mirkwood Tales (1977) by Eric S. Roberts. Being what appears to be a ‘Middle-earth in Mirkwood’ fannish RPG adaptation, to be played with the mid 1970s edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

* Tolkien in Lettere is a new podcast which seems to be about reading aloud all the Tolkien letters in Italian translation.

* And finally, British Fairies has a new post on ‘Away with the fairies’ — faery terms in English speech.