Tolkien Gleanings #382
* The new edition of Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature is a ‘Mythlore At 50: A Celebration (2026)’ special, including a history of this long-running journal of fantasy literature studies and reviews. Freely available online.
* The Tolkniety blog offers Tom Bombadil in unpublished letters, one letter from Tolkien himself in 1964 and another from Christopher Tolkien in 1984.
“… I left Tom Bombadil in and did not ‘tinker’ with him though much tempted to do so in the ‘Council of Elrond’, to bring him into the historical pattern. I have received a number of queries (puzzled or actually querulous) about him. The truth is that, as far as I was concerned, he just walked in, at the necessary point, and behaved as he would.”
* Hammond & Scull have today posted their “Tolkien Notes 23”. Freely available online. Among other items they clarify the dates and uses of Tolkien’s ‘Merton desk’, recently sold at auction.
* New at Word on Fire, the article “‘Dover Beach’ and Tolkien Offer Distinct Looks at Hope”. Freely available online.
* On Substack Father Roderick had a long new article for Valentine’s Day “The Kind of Love We Rarely Talk About”. Focusing on Aragorn and Arwen, but with a fine 1966 picture of Tolkien and Edith that I’ve never seen before. The quality of the picture suggests it was made by a magazine photographer. The new article, freely online, trails Father Roderick’s new booklet Love and Little Folk: Reflections on Love in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
* In the new academic book Herman Charles Bosman and the Depth of Humorous Storytelling (2025), the chapter “A Note on the Charmed World of Fiction and the World of Faery”. This discusses fairy stories in relation to humorous fiction, and the… “chapter draws primarily on Tolkien’s work on fairy stories”.
* In Italian on YouTube, Paulo Nardi asks how Tolkien reconciled Faith and Fairies. Note that YouTube can auto-dub into English.
* Faerie Magazine has a long free extract from their new article “Professor Tolkien and the Fairies”. Actually the article’s footer banner showing it as Faerie Magazine leads to an apparently different magazine called Enchanted Living, that seems as much witchy as faerie. So which title has the full Tolkien article? I’m not sure.
* And finally, those planning a visit to what’s left of Tolkien’s Birmingham this coming summer may like to know that there are new train stations opening very soon in the south of the city. At Moseley, Kings Heath and Stirchley. Visitors will no longer have to grind through grot on the bus. The train from the city centre is set to take around 11 minutes. Services should start in Spring 2026.