Tolkien Gleanings #286
* A collection of largely unpublished Tolkien correspondence is up for auction soon, and could be yours for half-a-dozen bitcoins. Judging by the short article, the letters appear to arise from Tolkien’s late collaboration and friendship with musician Donald Swann. I believe just such an archive came up for auction at Sotheby’s last July, and they still have a page suggesting that it sold. So… perhaps this new sale might be letters from that auction, being re-sold? Or are these other letters, at auction for the first time? Unfortunately, the journalist didn’t inquire that deeply.
* Birmingham’s historical-fantasy / romance novelist Zen Cho has been chosen to give the 2025 J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture, set for May 2025.
* The Catholic University of America Press has a Christmas 2024 essay by Graham McAleer which makes an unexpected point about utilitarian ‘war topography’ in a Middle-earth dependent on horses. In which the beautiful and slowly-nurtured (gardens, hedges, managed woods and forests) can become inherently strongly defensive in time of war. Freely available online…
“Tolkien’s pastoralism is not escapism but strategic. Tolkien’s contemporary, the British geopolitical thinker, Sir Halford Mackinder argued that the great forests of Europe blocked the westward expansion of the Mongol cavalry. The cavalry could [only] flow unimpeded across the steppe. A comparable point is made by Clausewitz who argues that the highly cultivated farmlands of the west of Europe makes military manoeuvres especially tricky. It is notable that the lands of Mordor are barren, purposely, so they can offer no resistance to the ever probing and domineering Eye of Sauron. By contrast, the heroes of the West include Treebeard, Shepherd of the Trees, and Sam, Bilbo’s gardener.”
This observation might have interesting implications for various statements of regret made about the loss of forests and garden/hedge-lands in Middle-earth. The warriors and leaders who make these statements are not regretting only their loss, but also what their loss entails militarily. Not only hedges. One can also observe the irony that it is partly the feet of the hobbits that defeats the main force of ruffians in the Shire. Since they are ambushed in a cutting on the Bywater Road “sloping up between high banks”, presumably a sort of ‘sunken green lane’ worn down through the earth by many generations of hobbit-feet. Again, we see an unconscious defensive double-use for a rural market-trading landscape.
* A Pilgrim in Narnia reveals more spreadsheet sprinklings, generated by feeding Tolkien’s letters to a leading text-analysis software.
* Italian Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, the Vatican’s under-secretary for culture, has compiled a new book of the current Pope’s writings, letters and speeches on the subject of poetry and literature. The collection has now been edited and published in Italian by Milan’s ARES. The book reportedly has many texts relating to Argentinian writers, but also a few on Tolkien. How extensive or deep the Tolkien commentary is, I don’t know.
* Tolkien Gateway now has the contents-list for Parma Eldalamberon #23: The Feanorian Alphabet, Part 2 & Eldarin Pronouns (2024). Also note the review in Journal of Tolkien Research Vol. 20, Issue 2 (2024).
* New on Archive.org, a free scan of the Folklore Society’s Unlucky Plants: A Folklore Survey (1985). From a survey of living informants, something which it was still possible to undertake in the Britain of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
* Next in the current Oxford Tolkien Seminars series, “‘Alight Here for Middle-earth!’: Tolkien, Place, and the Past” on 7th March 2025. Possibly about Tolkien and railways and sense-of-place, given the title? Note the university’s page for the event says “members of the university only”. I thought these talks were also open to interested members of the public, since the Tolkien Seminar HT 2025 | Oxford Tolkien Network Web page has no such ‘uni only’ stipulation. But it seems I’m wrong. Though, recordings of these talks are eventually placed on YouTube for all to see.
* And finally, an article which overlaps with fantasy/SF fandom’s deep attachment to ‘zines and small journals. On the enduring phenomenon of British hobbyists and their print magazines…
“the continued success of the hobby magazine [even in print, in these difficult days for sustainable print] can be attributed to a particularly British — and more broadly Northern European — genius for voluntary association. Whether centred around giant vegetables or antique fountain pens, little communities bubble up everywhere with no outside encouragement. I can’t help but wonder whether the British genius for immiseration also has a role to play. Lively minds will always find alternatives to decaying cities and nagging politicians.”