Tolkien Gleanings #275

* In the latest edition of The Critic magazine, “Lines from The Shire” considers Tolkien’s poetry. Freely available online.

* In the new issue of The Oldie magazine, “Harry Mount on the reopening of the Inklings’ Oxford pubs”. Freely available online. Mount is leading the local ‘community ownership’ company which now owns the other Inklings pub in Oxford, The Lamb and Flag…

“How tragic it would have been if these two ancient, bewitching pubs had disappeared, along with four centuries’ worth of memories of old drinkers, including some of the most famous writers in the English language.”

As well as pints and pies, the renovated pub has been offering events including… “talks by scientists, politicians and Oxford dons, and book launches”.

* A new Inklings Scholar Interview: Anne-Frederique Mochel-Caballero… “one of the few scholars in France exploring the works of C.S. Lewis”.

* The Chesterton Society podcast has a new interview episode on “J.R.R. Tolkien, Liturgy, Theology, and Myth”… “with Dr. Ben Reinhard, author of a new book, The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination“.

* Apparently the fantasy book sales boom isn’t only about the ‘romantasy’ sub-sub-genre (aka ‘frisky faeries’). Since The Bookseller magazine’s latest edition notes…

“J.R.R. Tolkien’s sales rising 21.3% year-on-year [in 2024, as evidenced] through Nielsen BookScan. [It’s suggested that bricks-and-mortar…] bookshops across the country [the UK] may soon need to rebalance their space” towards fantasy and Tolkien books.

Although one does wonder if Tolkien’s 2024 boost is partly down to the combined cost of the expanded Letters, the Collected Poems set, the proliferating box-set reissues, etc. In which case, the average Tolkienist is ‘all spent out’ and will be living on crusts for the rest of 2025. Anyway, the short article is currently freely available online.

* The Tolkien Society’s Oxonmoot 2025 event is booking now, for Oxford in early September 2025. No programme, as yet. Also note what is said to be the Tolkien Society’s first ever USA moot, Westmoot 2025 in early May, and with a submission deadline of 7th February 2025.

* Short courses from Signum University for April 2025. The list includes two candidate courses, ‘The Music of Middle-earth: Howard Shore’s The Two Towers’, and ‘Tolkien and the Sea’.

* A call-for-papers, regrettably just passed, brings news that the open-access journal Messengers from the Stars: On Science Fiction and Fantasy will have a 2025 special edition (#8) to be themed around ‘Fantasy and the Middle Ages’. The journal’s website is currently 404.

* In Germany in March 2025, a conference on Metal Mittelalter – Mittelalterrezeption im Metal (‘The Metal Middle-Ages — metal music’s reception of the medieval’).

* And finally, a 2024 Masters dissertation from Brazil. La e de volta outra vez: Tolkien e o surgimento do roleplaying game (‘There and back again: Tolkien and the emergence of roleplaying game’) specifically looks at early D&D and Tolkien. Which is a complex history that has been closely investigated in English, but perhaps not in Portuguese until now. Freely available for download.