Tolkien Gleanings #438
* The recently discovered ‘Crickhollow letter’ from Tolkien has sold for £19.5k [$26k, inc. auctioneer fees], to the Welsh town of Crickhowell. The local press report “It’s coming home: Welsh town wins bid to buy Tolkien letter”. The town’s GoFundme page has so far raised £14.5k, but a little more is still needed. The letter not only confirms that Crickhowell was the place-name inspiration for Crickhollow, but also reveals a previously unknown aspect of the LoTR plot.
* From Spain, more details about the recent discovery of the Tolkien translation “Soul’s Ward”, in an English article on the website of the University of Granada, “University of Granada project leads to the discovery of a previously unpublished document by J. R. R. Tolkien in an Oxford library”.
“In addition to this discovery, the TRANSMEL project has facilitated the first translation into Spanish of ‘The Figure of King Arthur’ […] the Arthurian essay by Charles Williams, a member of the Inklings literary group alongside J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.”
* Paolo Nardi has a long interview with Erica Martin on Fashion, Costumes, and Appearance in The Silmarillion and in related books such as HoME, History, Nature, and Peoples. They also discuss colour symbolism, and there’s a suggestion that the battle-masks of the dwarves in the Fifth Battle could be made of a material that gave some protection against dragon-fire. Free on YouTube.
* Catholic News considers “The Lord of the Rings and the Victory of Confession” in relation to the key scene with Boromir…
“This scene is often interpreted as a sort of confession because Boromir makes the three acts of the penitent which are required for the sacrament. These acts are first contrition (one must be sorry for one’s sins), secondly confession (you have to tell your sins to the priest), and finally satisfaction (you have to make up for your sins, usually through the penance assigned by the priest).”
* A new report discusses five notable results from the 2025 Survey of Tolkien Fanfiction Writers.
* New in the paid Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, “From Narnia to Neverland: A Guide for Developing and Teaching Popular Culture-Themed [‘PCT’] Courses” (2026) ($ paywall).
“this study gathered data-driven advice for instructors teaching PCT courses. Qualitative data were collected from 59 higher education instructors from across the United States, who represented a wide range of disciplines and were currently teaching or had formerly taught a PCT course.”
* It occurred to me that ageing eyes may find the tiny font and wide one-column layout of the Journal of Tolkien Research PDFs rather a burden. Freeware to the rescue! Willus’s K2pdfopt is genuine old-school freeware available for Windows and other desktop OS. There’s also a version that can run on PCs with older Intel CPUs. K2pdfopt is meant to convert two-column scientific papers for easier reading on old hardware ebook readers. But with its default settings (seen below) it works fine for simply converting PDFs to a more readable format. Works quickly, outputs to the same PDF format.
Tip: Skip along to page 3 or 4 before pressing “Preview”, to get past a PDF’s introductory boilerplate pages.
* The Polytranslator now offers English to Tolkien Elvish, and other Tolkien-invented languages.
“Polytranslator offers specialized translators for rare, ancient, indigenous, and modern dialects, from Old English and Ancient Greek to living regional varieties.”
* And finally, an eBay snap of what’s said to be the Army cap-badge for Tolkien’s old school, King Edward’s in Birmingham. (But I should add ‘buyer beware’, as many supposedly ‘original’ Army cap-badges are cheaply restruck new strikes from the old moulds). The dragon and Arthurian sword makes me wonder… i) is this the cap-badge of the King Edward’s School Officers Training Corps, aka ‘cadets’? And ii) did it always have that design, even when Tolkien was a KES officer cadet in 1909-1911?
