Tolkien Gleanings #384
* The Italian Tolkien journal I Quaderni di Arda (‘Arda Notebooks’) now has a book collection of the best articles, in English. Arda Notebooks: the Best of I Quaderni di Arda includes, among others, Thomas Honegger in English on “Re-enchanting a Dis-enchanted World: Tolkien (1892-1973) and Lovecraft (1890-1937)”. The publisher Walking Tree has free abstracts for the book.
* Fans’ Reception of Tolkien: A Mythology for the Contemporary World. Volume I. Cultural Expansion and Psychological Identification (2025). A free ebook from Poland, in English, under Creative Commons (CC BY-SA).
* This week The Catholic Herald has a new article on “Why we still read Tolkien”. (Possible $ paywall, but I had it for free).
* From Bulgaria in English, “Jewels And Jewel Cases: The Depiction Of Tolkien’s The Silmarillion In Blind Guardian’s Nightfall In Middle-earth”. Freely available online.
* Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson is to deliver Pembroke College’s 2026 ‘Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature’. Set for 19th May 2026, at Oxford Town Hall, with tickets to be released on 19th March. A recording of the lecture will also be released on YouTube.
* Coming soon from Princeton University Press, the book Arachnomania: Spiders and the Cultural Work They Do for Us (2026). Appears to be a broad survey of all sorts of spiders, good and bad, to be found in imaginative works. Set for release in mid May 2026.
* Finally, The Piano Makers is an ongoing project on Tolkien’s musical ancestors, from the Welsh Volante Opera…
“We are currently investigating the musicians and performers in the Tolkien family from the early 1800s to the early 1900s, almost all of whom having connections to their family business of making and maintaining pianos. Our plan is to get at least one recording of some of these works together and released in the foreseeable future. At the moment we are collecting the music and collating the information about the various family members.”
The latest project update is January 2026…
“Music for two more songs with words by W.M. Tolkien have been found and added to the listings.”