Tolkien Gleanings #378
* Hammond & Scull have released their Lord of the Rings Comparison 5, this being their latest attempt to authoritatively answer the question “Which edition of The Lord of the Rings has the most accurate text?”
* The Hillsdale Collegian magazine has an article which gives details of a new documentary feature on Tolkien. “New documentary follows Lewis and Tolkien’s friendship”. Freely available online.
“A guy in our [film] crew said, ‘Oh, you need trenches? I know a guy who’s got trenches in his backyard,’” Manton said. “We get on the phone, and he says, ‘Yes, I have a full trench system in the backyard. Do you need soldiers?’ A whole troop of reenactment guys came, and we filmed it all the same day.”
* The Tolkien Society’s magazine Amon Hen No. 317 (February 2026) is now available for download.
Among other items, the issue includes…
– Over several pages a lead essay summarizing the core Christian values of The Lord of the Rings, and then showing how these are distorted or ignored in the movies and also in what the author calls “the digital ecosystem”. The authors regret the move from a 1990s and 2000s Internet culture of open sharing and collaboration, to one in which attention-grabbing antagonism seems to dominate. But their article also notes that often the latter’s practice… “reveals that they do not read — or do not want to read in depth — what the books they claim to love truly contain”.
– A review of the book Into the Heart of Middle-earth: Exploring Faith and Fellowship in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (forthcoming, 20th February 2026).
– A look at what can be known about Elanor Gamgee, Sam’s first-born child. Who is also the cover-star.
* John Garth reviews his 2025 with Tolkien. Freely available online.
* From Italy, Paolo Nardi interviews… “Stefano Giorgianni, president of the AIST – Italian Association of Tolkien Studies”. The long discussion focused around… “the meaning and role of war in Tolkien, its fascination, and how it forever changes those involved.” In Italian, on YouTube.
* Also from Italy, in English, “Receiver of a Tolkien’s letter discovered” The unpublished 1955 letter to a “Mrs Frost” is up for auction, and the receiver is tracked down to Italy.
* Talking of letters, here in the UK we should watch out for the Royal Mail’s Lord of the Rings picture postage-stamps 2026. Due in Post Offices on 20th March 2026. No previews of the artwork / designs, at present. There’s no special Tolkien “100th” event to mark in 1926, unless they’re planning to celebrate Tolkien’s translations (Beowulf and Pearl in 1926, and his other later translations).
* J.P.S. Nagi on The Pen of Middle-earth, Part III, examining Tolkien’s hand-penned script… ” His worlds were born not in prose, but in script and the script itself was born from the mechanics of the pen.” Freely available online.
* New to me, David Bratman’s online “A Handlist of Books by the Inklings” (last updated January 2026). Freely available online.
* Merton College has a page on various memories of Lectures by J.R.R. Tolkien. One of these suggests that part of the reason for his partly-audible lecturing voice was the hall itself. In a smaller room at Merton in 1958… “he spoke clearly, audibly and rivetingly” to a dozen students across nearly a term of lectures. One also has to wonder if the term’s initial lecture in the big hall usefully served to ‘winnow out the chaff’, leaving him with only a dozen or so of the most dedicated students to enjoy for the rest of the term?
* In the open-access Spanish journal Revista de Filologia (December 2025), “Wonder and Its Vocabulary in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. In English and freely available online.
* At Penn State university in March 2026, “Tolkien’s Middle-earth”, a campus talk in which the editors will discuss their… “collection of essays, Tolkien’s Medievalism in Ruins: The Function of Relics and Ruins in Middle-earth, and the collection’s path to publication.”
* The 11th International Conference on Tolkien’s Invented Languages, 30th July – 2nd August 2026 at Marquette University, USA. Booking now.
* And finally, The Wikimedia Commons has a big folklore and folk-life recording contest for 2026 which asks people to… “photograph or record traditions, rituals, stories, food, dance, music, clothing, crafts, or community heritage” and upload it under Creative Commons for all to peruse and re-use.