Tolkien Gleanings #423

* St. Catherine’s College Oxford has a new college blog article, “Visiting Fellow uncovers unpublished Tolkien translation”. This is about the newly discovered Soul’s Ward.

* The Imaginative Conservative has a new post appreciating the book The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination (2025). Freely available online.

“I knew absolutely nothing about Tolkien’s abiding friendship with the extraordinary French theologian and priest, Louis Bouyer. Bouyer, critically, believed in continuity from pagan worship to the Mass as well, and Reinhard considers Tolkien’s own mythology a type of manifestation of Bouyer’s thought.”

* Personal Canon Formation has a new long article on “Tolkien’s Ents: Ecology Meets Philology”. (Substack, but free for me).

* Tolkniety has a long trip-report in English on “bringing Polish fans to England and Wales”. The trip was back in early May 2026, so they would have had both lovely weather and fresh foliage…

“[In Birmingham] our archaeological and conservation mission [was] at the Key Hill Nonconformist Cemetery. We found the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandparents and the symbolic grave of his father, Arthur Reuel. We also had to clear the grave, so that others could read the name TOLKIEN.” Followed by a… “beautiful Mass in Latin” at the Birmingham Oratory.

* Advance news that a World Fantasy Convention is being planned for Birmingham, England, and mooted for 24th-26th September 2027. Apparently it would be run under the same team that ran it in 2025, which bodes well.

* A forthcoming exhibition in Switzerland, Fantastische Karten zu Legendaren Geschichten (‘Fantastic maps from legendary stories’). At the Central Library in Zurich, opening 4th September and running until 5th December 2026. Tolkien maps and more, from much-loved tales.

* Bonhams has a 1971 Tolkien letter newly up for auction. The notable part, a comment on the onset of a “Noachic” rain and Oxford mystery plays, has already been published in the Letters.

* New on Archive.org, the catalogue for Profiles in History: Autograph Auction 36, Winter 2003. Featuring an image of a Tolkien-penned page with “I sit beside the fire…”.

* And finally, Malcolm Guite’s latest YouTube video features Noel: an overlooked gem by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Tolkien Gleanings #422

* Now freely available online, “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Soul’s Ward: A critical edition of his unpublished translation of the early Middle English homily Sawles Warde”. The translation had been wrongly sorted into a box of his Sir Orfeo material, and was thus lost until now.

* John Garth has announced he is undertaking a part-time DPhil at Oxford (the Oxford equivalent of a PhD, 75,000-word thesis). He’s launched a crowdfunding appeal for it, aiming at £900 a month. His research is… “about how world war and other modern conflicts shaped Tolkien’s masterpiece”.

* Also crowdfunding now, a short film from New Zealand…

“When a grieving father joins a Lord of the Rings location tour, he unexpectedly discovers connection, healing, and hope. Set against the stunning landscapes of Queenstown, the film stars Bruce Hopkins (Gamling in The Lord of the Rings movies) in the lead role, bringing authenticity and emotional depth to our story.”

* I think I missed noting the listing for the Tolkien Seminars at Magdalen College, April – June 2026. Still, the last two are yet to come, and all the talks should be on YouTube in due course.

   – Downfalls and ruins: Tolkien and the Lost World of Catholic England.
   – Old English and Old Norse Loan Words in Tolkien’s Gnomish Lexicon (1917).
   – Revisiting Songs for the Philologists.
   – Tolkien and Sawles Warde.
   – Genealogy of Smaug: draconic influences on Tolkien.
   – Charting Faerie: Cartography as the Threshold of Enchantment.
   – The Verbal System of Quenya.

* Signum University online short-courses for August 2026 include “Beginning Quenya 1”, “Tolkien and the Classical World”, and “Exploring Tolkien’s ‘On Fairy-stories'”.

* The editor of Pop Culture Fandoms, apparently a paid-for book set for publication by Bloomsbury in 2028, has called for short contributions. Send 200-300 word abstracts of your topic(s) by 30th August 2026. Only 100 fandoms will be chosen, so it may be best to also briefly state why your fandom is a worthy one.

* Matej Cadil has a long article on “Mushrooms in Middle-earth”. I hadn’t before considered that Merry’s book Herblore of the Shire would also have discussed mushrooms and fungi. I’d add to Cadil’s article, that Tolkien once wrote that the Druedain had great knowledge of fungi… “those that were poisonous, or useful as medicaments, or good as food” (from The Nature of Middle-earth). As such, I imagine that some of their fungi-lore, gained in lands adjacent to the Shire and with similar weather, would probably have found its way into Merry’s Herblore. (Cadil’s long Substack article is nearly free, but six of his new illustrations at the foot of the article are behind a paywall).

* The official Tolkien Calendar 2027: The Hobbit 90th Anniversary is set for release in August 2026. 13 images and… “Published for the first time, this calendar also includes a sketch by Maurice Sendak, creator of Where the Wild Things Are”.

* And finally, the “making-of ‘Ancalagon the Black’ for the 2027 Beyond Bree Tolkien calendar”…

Tolkien Gleanings #421

* A new Middle English translation by Tolkien is to be published in a few days. According to the Telegraph ($ paywall), a ten-page heavily-annotated typescript was found at the Bodleian and realised to be a long-lost and unknown translation. It had been lost due to mis-sorting into a box of Sir Orfeo papers. His translation of the homily Sawles Warde will now be published for free on 8th June 2026 in an edition of the journal The Review of English Studies, as “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Soul’s Ward: A Critical Edition of His Unpublished Translation of the Early Middle English Homily Sawles Warde”.

A little research shows that the West Midlands alliterative dialect homily was written c. 1210 (sources differ, some say 1240), most likely in Herefordshire in the far south-west of the West Midlands. The homily was itself a partial translation and popular local adaptation/expansion of part of Hugh of St. Victor’s De Anima. Tom Shippey called it a “little allegory” of the guarding of the purity of the soul with a protective structure. The recent book Tolkien on Chaucer quotes a passing mention of it by Tolkien, found in a 1920s review by Tolkien of an edition of the Hali Meidenhad. Tolkien said there of Sawles Warde that it… “approaches the liveliness and picturesqueness, if not the humanity” of the Hali Meidenhad. A 1984 essay by Anne Eggebroten remarks… “the Sawles Warde author copies [Hugh’s] passages on heaven and hell more or less ver­batim, [but] he expands and strengthens the castle metaphor, dramatizing it with a fuller cast of characters.”

* The Tolkien Guide has a review of the new book J.R.R. Tolkien and G.B. Smith, With Wind in our Ears, and also an interview with Giuseppe Pezzini. The recording of the interview is also on YouTube.

* A new special-issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research on Asexuality in Tolkien’s Legendarium. The usually ‘rolling issue’ format is this time forgone and we have a complete-in-one-go edition. As usual, freely available online. Includes amongst others…

   – Introduction: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Tolkien’s Works.
   – “Motions of Love and Friendship”: Elven (A)sexuality.
   – “As Bachelors Very Exceptional”: An Asexual Reading of Frodo Baggins.

* Lawyers, Guns and Money has a new long post on The Art of Cor Blok in relation to his illustrating Tolkien. Freely available and heavily illustrated. The author notes that the artbook A Tolkien Tapestry: Pictures to accompany The Lord of the Rings can still be had on Amazon, and I’d also note that it’s a reasonable £20 in hardback.

* Elfenomeno has a blog post on a newly revised and expanded edition of the Tolkien FAQ book in Spanish. Apparently “fully up to date”, and the full title is J.R.R. Tolkien: Frequently Asked Questions (and a Few Odd Ones). The handsome new hardback book can be had from Legendaria Ediciones.

* And finally, new to me is a series of four French-language France Culture podcasts on Tolkien and fantasy worlds, from the national broadcaster Radio France. From 2018, but still freely available in the UK and without captchas or region-blocking.

Tolkien Gleanings #420

* The latest Amon Hen magazine is available, for members of the Tolkien Society. Issue 319 (June 2026) has, among other items, articles on…

   — “The Nostalgic Lothlorien: Spiritual Nostalgia in Lord of the Rings”.
   — “The Sacred and the Mythic in Middle-earth”. (theology and myth)
   — “J.R.R. Tolkien during WWI”. (unknown focus)

* Birmingham’s King Edward VI Foundation had display-boards “Celebrating Tolkien’s School Days”, at The Sarehole Festival in Birmingham. Image No.2 on their site shows their boards.

“Among the highlights was a dedicated section crafted by the Foundation Archive, that focused on Tolkien’s formative years at King Edward’s School, where his passion for language and literature began to flourish.”

Also, here are images of two of the local information banners from the Tolkien Society…

There was plenty more to see and do, as Bensonblues summed up…

“A gorgeous mix of cosplay, great food, swordsmiths, talks, fights, books, and art — all to celebrate the legacy, messages, meaning, and world of J.R.R. Tolkien, Brummie!”

* The Birmingham Mail local newspaper has a short report on the Sarehole Festival in Birmingham. Online access may vary.

* The latest issue of the open-access Journal of Markets & Morality is a C.S. Lewis special issue.

* The latest Religion & Liberty magazine uses the opportunity of Tolkien’s Bovadium Fragments for an article on “Tolkien and Tech”. Freely available online.

* Tolkien: Medieval and Modern on “Locating Tolkien’s Sacred Worldview”.

* And finally, House for sale in Darnley Road, Leeds… “This spacious property, once the residence of renowned author J.R.R. Tolkien, has been converted into three apartments”. The house at 2 Darnley Road was the family’s first house-purchase, an ownership enabled by Tolkien being promoted to Professor at Leeds. The family lived there from 1924-26, and it was the birthplace of Christopher Tolkien. A ‘Blue Plaque’ was added in 2012.

Leeds Archives has three images of No.2 from 1945, with the house in b&w and looking a bit war-weary. Prints are available from them. Above I give one of their online images a quick colourising and a time-of-day makeover, and also fix the broken gate, to make it appear more of a ‘homely house’. In reality, the mid 1920s probably would have seen net-curtains on the lower windows, and a house in chilly northern England would also have had heavy curtains hanging at the sides. The mid 1920s lacked central-heating!

Tolkien Gleanings #419

* The forthcoming new Miriam Ellis artbook A Shire Walking-party now has a front cover and a Web page.

* Tolkien: Medieval and Modern on “Worship and the Crossing of Thresholds” in The Lord of the Rings.

* Talking of crossing thresholds (tax thresholds, in this instance), Gleanings on “Tolkien and the taxman”.

* Wardrobe Door re-visits the review by C.S. Lewis of his friend’s then-new book The Lord of the Rings.

* Teaching the Arthurian Tradition (2026) is a new academic anthology from many different authors. The ebook is available now, and the paper versions will arrive in July 2026. Includes the chapter “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Arthurian Inspirations”…

“The first section of this essay explores how Tolkien acquired his knowledge of Arthuriana and how that knowledge inspired his own mythology. The second section explains one model for teaching a Tolkien author course, with special attention to Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and to his short story “Farmer Giles of Ham”. The third section considers Tolkien’s original contribution to Arthuriana — his incomplete narrative poem, “The Fall of Arthur” — and suggests how it could be taught as a concluding text in an Arthurian literature course.”

* A new practical McFarland book, now available, Worldbuilder’s Guide to Religion: Essentials for Writers, Game Developers and Dungeon Masters (2026).

* From Florida, a new Masters dissertation, “Saltfish and Seedcake: Examining Fantasy Through Food Studies” (2026). Preview PDF only.

“I consider the foods of Earthsea, Narnia, and Middle-earth to offer various perspectives on the worldbuilding and examine the implications of different foods in these well-known settings.”

* A new Map of the Northern Wastes in the late Third Age of Middle-earth. Keep on clicking though and you’ll get to large 5Mb .JPG files. The map with a few settlements reflects the additions found in the RPG gamebook/guidebook from Iron Crown, The Northern Wastes (1997). The plainer version reflects Tolkien’s own maps.

* New at the NLS old maps site, the free Ordnance Survey, City of Oxford from the ‘Six-Inch Towns’ map series, surveyed in 1919. In a very high resolution and zoom-able online map, which historians may find useful for orientation.

* An Oxfordshire rare bookseller is listing what are said to be items originally from the library Of J.R.R. Tolkien. Four have already sold, one is still available…

* And finally, from eBay, some details of a 1906 Birmingham used bookshop. The shop was at 14-16 John Bright Street, a short walk around the corner from what was then the main entrance to Birmingham New St. station, in the heart of the city centre.

Apparently this long-standing shop carried some 50,000 rare and scarce books, plus poetry and artbooks. It was run by an expert bookfinder. Were inky-fingered schoolboys allowed in? If not then the young Tolkien and his friends may not have known it circa 1909-1911. Still, a little research shows it was evidently a city fixture from around the 1890s to the 1920s.