Tolkien Gleanings #433

* The latest edition of the German open-access journal Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven Mediavistischer Forschung (‘The Middle Ages: Perspectives In Mediaevalist Research’) is a special issue on ‘Medieval Patterns in Modern Fantasy’. Includes, among others (titles approximately translated)…

   — The neo-medieval grammar of fantasy worlds.
   — Color semantics and color symbolism in the Middle Ages.
   — Praise the art (how videogame players engage with religious art in games)
   — Runes on screen in The Last Kingdom and The Green Knight.
   — Audiovisual aesthetics of the medieval.
   — Druid? Magician? Teacher? Bard? On the reception of Merlin in analog games.
   — Elves and Fairies (short review by Thomas Honegger of Elfen und Feen, 2024).

* In the latest edition of the paywall journal Marvels & Tales, partially-free reviews of (among many others)…

   — ‘The Magical Forest’ exhibition at the Estonian Children’s Literature Centre.
   — The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls, and Other Social Supernatural Beings: European Traditions.
   — Giants and Dwarfs in European Art and Culture, ca. 1350–1750.

* Walking Tree Press have now published Tolkien: History Meets Legend (2026). The book aims to show some of the ways in which… “Tolkien excavated the mother lode of his own [biographical] history to create legends.”

* The Notion Club Papers argues that “The Sea Bell” is not autobiographical for J.R.R. Tolkien; but for Frodo. And that Tolkien’s “The Death of St Brendan” is autobiographical for himself.

* From the UK, the PhD thesis The Tale We’ve Fallen Into: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and the post-Christian quest for meaning (2026). Explores the LoTR’s reception among a sample of twenty contemporary non-religious readers. Suggest that a truly enchanting fantasy can perform a ‘secondary’ religious function for some readers. Freely available online.

* New Renaissance Mindset reviews Tolkien’s translations of Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Sir Orfeo.

* The University Bookman reviews the book The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination (2025).

* Dimitra Fimi’s blog reveals a new book in the making. It will be..

“a new, deep and meticulous exploration of The Lord of the Rings, that will allow me to share fresh thoughts and ideas on this great book since my big monograph on Tolkien nearly 20 years ago. ‘The Slow LotR Re-read’ you’ve been following [on the blog] was not just an impromptu idea: it is the scaffolding of a second book, on Tolkien.”

Also of note…

“I have officially opened my entire historical [SubStack, usually part-paywalled] archive to everyone [for the summer, until 7th September]”

* And finally… new at the Sothebys auction house, a Lord of the Rings, 1961 edition with a taped-in note on the creation of the dwarves. Signed in biro. Tolkien liked biro pens as soon as they first appeared for the public (September 1946, ninepence each at Woolworths).

Tolkien Gleanings #432

* The Spanish Tolkien Society has launched the Aelfwine Essay Award 2026. Now in its 22nd year, the competition offers substantial cash prizes for the winners. Deadline: 9th August 2026. So far as I can tell, English is acceptable and those writing directly in English do not need to provide a translation. Those writing in languages other than Spanish (or Catalan, Basque, or Galician) or English must also provide a good translation of their essay into either English or Spanish.

* Elfenomeno has a new English text interview with Quenya specialist Helge K. Fauskanger…

“Through ‘Ardalambion’, his Quenya course, and now ‘Speak Elf Yourself’, he has helped make a complex and often fragmentary field accessible without losing sight of its philological demands. In this interview, we speak with him about Tolkien, Elvish, linguistic invention and the strange vitality of languages that were never quite meant to be ‘finished’.”

* John Garth looks at the Welsh claims for Crickhallow as a primary-world inspiration for Tolkien ($ Substack, article mostly paywalled). That Tolkien is talking only about the placename seems obvious in the letter, but I assume Garth’s paywalled article also evaluates the various local claims for the place and its surroundings (as the supposed inspiration for Buckland, Bucklebury, the Brandywine Bridge or even Erebor).

* A forthcoming paper I’d missed noting here, set to be presented at the forthcoming Leeds International Mediaeval Congress in July 2026. Kristine Larsen’s “Medieval Timekeeping in Middle-earth and Valinor”. I’d assume it’ll be in the Journal of Tolkien Research in due course.

* In the early 1960s the Finnish Moomintrolls artist Tove Jansson spent nearly two years working on illustration for The Hobbit. Twelve full-page black-and-white drawings, ten half-page illustrations, plus smaller chapter decorations. The result was the Finnish language edition in 1962. Now English readers will be able to enjoy these same illustrations, in a new English edition titled The Hobbit: Illustrated by Tove Jansson. The book is set for publication in September 2026.

* And finally, new on Archive.org is a scan of Pipes And Tobacco Magazine for Winter 2001, with a long article surveying instances of leaf-growing, pipe smoking and related small pyrotechnics (e.g. Sting is edged with “a blue flame”) in Middle-earth. It doesn’t discuss Tolkien’s own primary-world preferences in pipe brands and tobacco blends.

Tolkien Gleanings #431

* An unusual late Tolkien item is ‘on the block’ at Forum Auctions, as Lot 162. Teenager David Best had translated The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other poems from The Lord of the Rings into English runes, in four school notebooks with illustrations. Then… “Best sent off these notebooks to Tolkien who wrote back thanking him for his efforts and supplied corrections.” The resulting bundle of notebooks and letters is now up for auction.

* New Renaissance Mindset reviews Roverandom, and Mr. Bliss and Farmer Giles of Ham in the latest book editions. All freely available online.

* In Italian on YouTube, Paolo Nardi considers Tolkien’s dragons, in relation to their distinctive effects on time and memory. Note that YouTube can auto-dub into English, these days.

* Luminous Libro podcast interviews C.S. Lewis expert Dr. Louis Markos on “Christology in Fantasy”.

* The C.S. Lewis Institute usefully outlines an important recent talk posted on YouTube under the easily-overlooked title of Dawn Chorus.

* Another new kind-of-a-biography of Tolkien is due soon. The King Under the Mountain: In Search of J.R.R. Tolkien is due in mid September 2026 from Constable, as a 320-page hardback and Kindle e-book. The paperback follows in summer 2027. The book is billed as…

“part biography, part critical study and part a fan’s notes […] D.J. Taylor unpicks the myths that Tolkien created around himself, as well as the social, political and cultural contexts that informed his work”

* New on Archive.org, a microfilm scan of the Library of Congress Bulletin for May 1986, which notes that the then-editor of the OED had studied Middle English under Tolkien.

* Artist Matej Cadil has a new illustrated post, “The Druedain: Who Are Tolkien’s Wild Men and What Forgotten Past Do They Reflect?” He also shows his fine 2022 illustration of “The Forbidden Pool” in Ithilien. ($ Substack, but with a large chunk of the article for free).

* Jake Weidmann celebrates pipe-smoking with his new fine-art print of Tolkien and Lewis. Pre-ordering now.

* And finally, two literary immortals battle it out in “J.R.R. Tolkien vs H.P. Lovecraft”, fully animated as if a videogame.

Tolkien Gleanings #430

* Author Brandon Sanderson has posted his recent Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature talk online, as text. The video recording appeared on YouTube a few days ago.

* A new Masters dissertation from Canada, “Formative Fairy Stories: Edmund Spenser’s and J.R.R. Tolkien’s construction of British national identity through fantastic narratives” (2026). Freely available online.

* From Eastern Europe, the new dissertation “Poetic Devices in Selected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien: Translation and Analysis” (2026). Being an attempt to translate into Czech. Freely available online.

“The thesis does not aim to provide a technically perfect translation. It seeks to present a text that preserves the type of verse and rhyme used in the original, while at the same time being as close as possible to the original text in terms of its mood, as well as being comprehensible to a 21st century reader at the same time.”

* Artist Miriam Ellis this week considers new questions that arise from the new Tolkien letter relating to ents on the far northern border of the Shire.

* Tolkien’s enduring legacy is now causing “overtourism” in the Cotswolds. As explained in a new conference paper from Ireland, “(Over) Tourism and Tolkien’s Doors of Durin: Challenges And Opportunities for St Edward’s Local Parish Church”. Freely available online.

“This paper considers the impacts of overtourism on the local parish church in the English Cotswolds that allegedly inspired Tolkien’s Doors of Durin. [This Grade 1 listed church, c. 13th-15th century, is now] a destination for approximately 200,000 visitors a year (the equivalent of ten coaches every day).”

Image: My restored and colourised postcard of the door and trees. Possibly from the late 1920s, I’d say, judging by the lettering style and the typography on the back. So far as I can tell, there’s no hard evidence Tolkien ever saw them.

* And finally, Tolkien’s imagination has inspired a mighty suggestion for celebrating America’s 250th year. The Lewis And Clark American Argonath Project, two 250 foot tall monuments.

Tolkien Gleanings #429

* Newly online, the German Inklings Yearbook, as Inklings Jahrbuch fur Literatur und Athetik 42 (2026). This has the proceedings of the ‘Fantasy for Children / Children in Fantasy Symposium’ of 2024, plus book reviews. Freely available online and under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Includes the paper “Fairy Lands Forlorn: (Re-)Enchantment in Fantastic Children’s Literature”, plus book reviews for…

   — Tolkien Studies Vol. XX.
   — The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
   — Germanic Heroes, Courage, and Fate: Northern Narratives of Tolkien’s Legendarium.

* I’d overlooked two talks at the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society this term, now given and gone. But I’m noting the titles here, and hopefully search will (in due course) reveal recordings or papers placed online…

   — 5th May: “J.R.R. Tolkien and the Patriotism of G.K. Chesterton: Little England, The Shire, and Notting Hill”.
   — 19th May: “Cordial Dislike or Careful Distinctions? Exploring Tolkien’s Complicated Use of Allegory”.

* From the USA, a new Masters dissertation “Creation as Calling: The Intersection of Faith and Craft” (2026). Freely available online..

“analyzes the literary strategies used by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Brandon Sanderson to embed faith into their narratives. It compares Lewis’s use of allegory, Tolkien’s concept of ‘applicability’ and sub-creation, and Sanderson’s complex worldbuilding as three distinct but complementary models for presenting spiritual truths without overt religious instruction.”

* The Fantasy Hive blog takes a trip to the lovely island of Corfu, and visits the Spiros Gelekas gallery devoted to the art of Middle-earth.

* A casting call for a forthcoming film…

* And finally, a timely discovery as three days of 90-degree dragon-breath weather (and consequent media hysteria) sweeps across England. Who knew that 2023 saw the release of a full labour-of-love restoration, SFX upgrade, and 4k Blu-ray of the major fantasy movie Dragonslayer (1981)? Not me. The news passed me by completely, until now.

Tolkien Gleanings #428

* An elegant new interactive map, Middle-earth Storyteller. It shows the movements of each character across time, along a unified timeline and a dynamic map of Middle-earth. More characters, such as Radagast, are set to be added soon. Freely available.

* In the latest Edinburgh University Press journal Moreana, devoted to Thomas More studies, the article “From Utopia to Faerian eutopia: Thomas More, Ernst Bloch, and J.R.R. Tolkien”. ($ paywall).

“This article attempts to reconstruct Tolkien’s understanding of utopia, through his letters and his familiarity with utopian literature — particularly Thomas More’s Utopia. It positions Tolkien’s writings in relation to Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope and within the broader twentieth-century crisis of utopia, marked by the disillusionment caused by the rise of totalitarian ideologies.”

* The latest issue of The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy reviews Tolkien, Philosopher of War (2024). Freely available online.

* New Renaissance Mindset reviews Tolkien’s The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Freely available online.

“What gives the collection its lasting importance is that Tolkien’s critical positions are inseparable from his creative practice. He is not writing from the sidelines. The arguments in these essays illuminate The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the whole architecture of Middle-earth, just as the fiction gives the criticism its authority.”

* In the latest issue of North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies, “Phantastic Art: George MacDonald’s View of the Imagination”. The issue is dated 2024 but seems to be late, being placed online only in the last few days. Judging by the date on the article itself, it is to be dated as 2026. Freely available online.

* New in the first issue of the journal Life Writing, “Editing Friendship: Arthur Greeves and Walter Hooper as Custodians, Curators, and Censors of the C.S. Lewis–Arthur Greeves Correspondence” ($ paywall)

* Newly uploaded to Archive.org, a run of the journal Filologia Polska (‘Polish Philology’), 2015-2025. Freely available.

* In the latest issue of the Virginia Tech undergraduate journal Philologia, “How the Symbolism of Color Illustrates Honor in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. Freely available online.

* In Spanish, the latest issue (No. 11) of the free PDF magazine La Antorcha is a special issue on prayer. It includes the short article “Tolkien and the Hidden Prayer” which suggests that… “delving into how the author of The Lord of the Rings understood prayer allows us to discover new dimensions in his work.”

* Stafford Borough Council now has a listings page for the Tolkien Weekend at Great Haywood on 11th to 12th July 2026, along with contact details for the organisers.

Picture: Sherbrook Vale circa the 1930s, a short walk from Great Haywood. Colourised.

* And finally, “Tolkien’s Argument for Solitude” as a 30 minute YouTube talk. Notes the history of hermits and the Desert Fathers and monastic traditions in Christianity, and then relates hermits to the relative isolation of Beorn, Tom Bombadil, Treebeard and Gollum. Of course, Beorn does have his animals and very lively visiting bear-kin, and Bombadil has his lively young Goldberry. So they’re not really alone. Radagast might have made an interesting addition, though admittedly not so much is known about him.

Tolkien Gleanings #427

* This year’s J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature was given on 19th May at Oxford Town Hall, by author Brandon Sanderson. The one-hour recording of his talk is now freely available on YouTube. Sanderson talked about some key elements Tolkien introduced into fantasy that were lacking: absence of cynicism and irony; a world built with a many-layered authenticity and crafted with a scholar’s care; magic that can act at many differing levels within the plot; he re-made elves / goblins / dwarves / ‘the little-people’ and wove them into a coherent whole; and he added a gripping ‘save the world from the dark lord’ plot. Sanderson went on to defend fantasy as a genre. Yes, fantasy can be a temporary escape but it can also bring hope to many, and hope can spur good things in the real world.

* Talking of ‘revolting dark lord’ story plots. In the November 2025 issue of Modern Philology, “The Night Departure: Tracing Medieval Epic from Ariosto to Milton” (£ paywall)…

“reading ‘Paradise Lost’ against ‘Orlando furioso’ and its chivalric predecessors allows Satan’s revolt to be situated in a long line of rebel baron epics […] The epic quality of the Fall, usually ascribed to the artful debasement of classical models, is also indebted to the medieval poems of feudal revolt. Recognizing the persistence of the older epic form has important implications for both poetic and political readings of the poem.”

* From South Africa, a Masters dissertation which offers “A psychobiography of J.R.R Tolkien: exploring his psychological development and creativity” (2025), through the lens of a psychological theory from the period (“1950, 1968”). Freely available for download.

* The knowledgeable Exodus 90 podcast… “unpacks the First Book of Kings [Hebrew Bible] and how it relates to J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of kingship”. Freely available on YouTube.

* Also new on YouTube, Nerdvana visits Oxford, Blackwell’s bookshop, the Bodleian, and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis sites. With a steadycam, thankfully.

* There’s been lots of local newspaper coverage for the UK’s first official Brandywine hobbit festival here in the UK. The above Web link is to coverage in the nearby local newspaper for the town of Shrewsbury.

* And finally, “Crickhowell launch fundraiser to buy Lord of The Rings letter”. Given that the letter also has Tolkien expanding on a bit of the plot of LoTR, I suspect it’ll go for more than the relatively modest guide-price. The town may find they’re having to stump up a lot more than they expect. Especially as they’ll be up against American institutions with deep pockets.

Tolkien Gleanings #426

* Crickhowell in Breconshire does, after all, have at least a place-name link with Crickhollow in The Lord of the Rings. The Abergavenny Chronicle local newspaper this week notes the contents of… “A letter written by Tolkien in 1966, that is due to be auctioned next month at Christie’s”. In it Tolkien wrote…

“I have been in most parts of Wales, but the place names I used are made up from English models or borrowed from books, though Crickhollow was actually meant to resemble Crickhowell.”

Clear enough, though it’s very obvious that he’s talking about the placename rather than the place. Thus local claims for being the inspiration for Buckland, Bucklebury, the Brandywine Bridge or even Erebor are all still unsupported. The letter appears to be unpublished.

* More interesting for the wider world in this new letter is that the “walking elms”, one of which you’ll recall was seen on the edge of the North Moors by Sam’s cousin, were indeed ents. Tolkien writes that they were… “keeping watch on the Shire” at Gandalf’s bidding.

Which suggests that some ents had a foothold in the north somewhere. Most likely in the high Hills of Evendim, where they would be within reach of the elves of the Grey Havens, and from which they could fairly easily patrol the northern border of the North Moors (the ent was seen “away beyond the North Moors” — Sam, my emphasis). The elves passing westward through the Shire could then have conveyed a message from Gandalf to guard the hobbit hunting-tracks on the northern approaches to the Shire. Or perhaps he took the time to go himself. Also, we can assume the northern ents were especially gigantic ‘Elm ents’, since Sam says… “as big as an elm tree, and walking – walking seven yards to a stride”, while the smaller Fangorn ents only made much less to each stride. If elms, then we might also infer that the high Hills of Evendim (high enough that the elves who once lived there travelled exclusively by river) were not all forbidding steep slopes of close-packed northern pines and firs, at least on the western / south-western side.

* A new book, The Language of Early English Dialect Literature (2026). Reveals…

“the rich and varied forms that linguistic creativity takes in the work of dialect writers from across England between 1547 and 1877, ranging from Cumbria in the north-west and Newcastle in the north-east, to Cornwall in the south-west and Kent in the south-east. Challenging the traditional view of dialect literature as backwards-looking and conventional, this book makes a case for its stylistic ambitiousness and complexity.”

* Matej Cadil on “Roast Mutton: Trolls at Dawn and Treasures Underground”, this being the second long illustrated post for his… “illustrated journey through The Hobbit”. (Substack, but nearly all free).

* Pre-orders are now live for the CD-sets and scores for the demo recordings for Musical Chapters from The Hobbit, performed by Volante Opera and authorised by the Tolkien Estate.

* And finally, Futuropolis appear set to release a new Tolkien biography in August 2026, by Henrik Rehr and Chantal Van Den Heuvel. Their previous books were BD-style illustrated albums, running 130-160 pages, on the lives of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I’d assume the same format for their Tolkien book?

Tolkien Gleanings #425

* John Garth has a new article on “How the tides of Tolkien’s world shaped The Lord of the Rings” (Substack, but free). This puts some basic time parameters on his newly-undertaken PhD research. He will look at the gathering storm in the 1920s and 30s, as well as the Second World War and its immediate aftermath…

“my Oxford doctoral research will continue the same work [as the First World War book] by graphing the relation between Tolkien’s ‘outward circumstances’ and what he wrote from the 1920s to 1940s, particularly The Lord of the Rings.”

* In the USA, the Wheaton Archives & Special Collections and the Marion E. Wade Center has a blog post on their “New Treasures”. These include Tolkien’s copy of C.S. Lewis’s Broadcast Talks, talks broadcast to the nation on Christianity during the early part of the Second World War.

* Dreaming Spires outlines “a syllabus for my 2026 Oxford Project” ($ SubStack, partially free)…

“we’re going to apply for Reader’s Cards at the Bodleian Library. [… the research in Oxford will focus on how the] same threads [that are to be seen in The Lord of the Rings also] appear in the web of words and ideas of three other famous Oxonians of the century preceding Tolkien’s arrival in 1911: St. (Cardinal) John Henry Newman, the art critic John Ruskin, and novelist, poet, and designer William Morris, the leading light of the Arts & Crafts Movement.”

* A new article at The Times of Israel website muses at length on seeming parallels between Jewish mysticism and Tolkien’s work…

“The apophatic withdrawal of God as a precondition for creation, the concept known as tzimtzum, has no precise structural equivalent in Augustine or Aquinas. The concept of evil as an active structure that imprisons divine sparks rather than a mere privation of good is absent from the Thomistic framework. The insistence that repair is collective, partial, and never completed within history, which Tikkun Olam describes, stands in direct tension with Christian soteriology, where a single act of redemption is sufficient and complete. […] The lineage of Aquinas, Boethius, and Pseudo-Dionysius does not account for the active structure of evil, the collective and partial nature of repair, or the divine spark within the fallen.”

* The French literary site PhiLitt has a new long article on Tolkien and Barfield. Freely available online.

* The new Italian book Note d’autore: casi editoriali tra musica e letteratura (‘Notes and Authors: editorial fusions between music and literature’) (2026) has a chapter on The Hobbit and music/song.

* The revised and expanded edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien has just arrived in Spanish bookshops, in translation.

* The Dwarrow Scholar website has had a design makeover. The Neo-Khuzdul Dictionary of the Dwarves is now online as a search-box, as well as being a PDF to download. Both versions are free.

* And finally, Sweden’s Shadow of Morgoth is graduating from making heavy-metal music videos, and is now starting to put Turin’s story on the screen. Three parts so far. One, two and three. All free on YouTube.

Tolkien Gleanings #424

* Just published as an ebook, an English translation of an Italian book from 2023, The Warriors of Middle-earth – Armies, Equipment and Clothing: Vol.1: Hobbits, Bardings and Dunlendings (2026). It’s been properly translated by a human, not an automated system, and has a sumptuous photographic page for each costume along with its detailing and accessories.

“Drawing on extensive research, this volume sheds light on some lesser-known aspects of Middle-earth’s material culture, offering readers a deeper and more realistic understanding of this world and its history. […] intended not only for scholars and admirers of Tolkien’s work, but also for enthusiasts of historical costume and military history, as well as illustrators, costume designers and historical re-enactors.”

Two other books by the same author can be had in Italian, as yet untranslated.

* A forthcoming book from Bloomsbury, Tolkien’s Material Culture: (Extra)ordinary Objects in Middle-earth and Beyond. According to Amazon UK this is set for release in February 2027, to be priced at the ‘university libraries only’ price of £75.

* An undergraduate dissertation, newly published as an ebook, Tolkien’s Medieval Naming Methods (2026). Examines medieval naming principles, as they appear to have fed into Tolkien’s personal names, place names, and even things like the “names of swords or calendars” and other material items. (I assume calendars could have been material, in the form of wooden clogg almanacs, notched stave tallies and suchlike).

* The Mexican scholarly journal Euphyia has a new special-issue on ‘Paradise Lost: Myth, Knowledge and Action’. Includes, in Spanish, the article “Nostalgia for paradise: Exile and redemption in the mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Freely available online, in open-access.

* Now published by De Gruyter, Tolkien Spirituality: Constructing Belief and Tradition in Fiction-based Religion (2026). I’m uncertain if it’s an updating and expansion of the author’s PhD thesis The Spiritual Tolkien Milieu: a study of fiction‐based religion (2014), or not.

* The Tolkien Society will host a one-day online seminar on Tolkien’s Invented Languages, an event set for 21st November 2026. Not to be confused with America’s 11th International Conference on Tolkien’s Invented Languages which is set for 30th July – 2nd August 2026.

* Shawn Marchese has an online report from Westmoot 2026. I was especially interested to hear of these talks…

   — Jeremy Edmonds, who trekked through fanzines to share a glimpse of the early years of Tolkien fandom in the 1950s.

   — Chad Bornholdt, who presented exhaustive research conducted with Bill Fliss of Marquette University, tracking the movements of each of the nine Ringwraiths across the Shire and beyond during the hunt for the Ring.

* The recent Tolkien Days 2026 festival, in Geldern-Pont in Germany, is reported to have been a success. The major four-day Tolkien festival at the end of May 2026, attracted… “around 14,000 visitors and combined Tolkien-themed activities, art shows, LARPs, live entertainment and concerts for attendees from across Europe”. The headline music act for 2026 was Italian power-metal band Wind Rose, their first appearance at the festival.

* Crowdfunding now, a screen documentary about the Tolkien Society Forodrim of Sweden.

* And finally, just a reminder that 2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of the Silmarillion in mid September 1977. Now might be the time to start planning special events and publications, if the anniversary is not already on your calendar. 1977 was also the year of the Carpenter Biography.