Tolkien Gleanings #446
* New in the Spanish open-access journal Via Panoramica: Revista de Estudos Anglo-Americanos / A Journal of Anglo-American Studies, “Mapping Middle-earth: Cartographic Representations and Transmedia Storytelling in The Lord of the Rings Online”. Meaning, the massive multiplayer videogame. Freely available, in English…
“The analysis will focus on key locations in regions such as Eriador and Gondor, to assess how closely the [game’s] terrain and landmarks align with Tolkien’s text.”
* A 2027 International Congress on Medieval Studies call for papers for a session on “Continued Lessons from the Professor: Borrowings from Tolkien, 2020+”. This will focus on… “shifts in the use of Tolkien’s works, sources, and methods” after 2020. Deadline: 15th September 2026.
* The forthcoming £155 Routledge academic book Thinking Monstrosity in Western and Global Literatures and Creative Media (due early September 2026) has the chapter “Intersectionality in the Water Spirits of the Lord of the Rings and the Adventures of Tom Bombadil”. Compares Goldberry and Old Man Willow with… “African and Aboriginal river spirits”.
* A call for papers from the Journal of Juvenilia Studies for a special-issue on Youth Writers and Their Worlds. “Youth” here means “authors under the age of 21”. Deadline: 15th December 2026.
* Some Gleanings readers may be interested in the chunky new biography The Star-Treader: A Life of Clark Ashton Smith (due in August 2026)… “This long-overdue biography provides, for the first time, a detailed account of Smith’s life and assesses his place in literary history.” As explained in DMR’s 2020 blog post “When Klarkash-Ton Read The Book of Westmarch”, Smith was a strong early appreciator of the Lord of the Rings. He was especially fascinated by Gandalf’s late aside that Sauron “is but a servant or emissary” of an unspecified greater evil. At that time there was no Silmarillion, leaving Smith free to imagine something very dark and chthonic indeed.
* Artist Miriam Ellis has new Tolkien prints available for summer 2026. And the three latest posts on her blog show the same pictures on the screen, with discussion.
* Tom Crean on Reddit digs up a magazine ad from The Listener for The Return of the King. At a glance the ad was effectively one massive ‘spoiler’ for the Lord of the Rings. Amazingly, it was placed by the publisher. Many potential readers of the first two books must have been very annoyed to see this spoiler. The Listener was the BBC’s weekly cultural / transcriptions magazine, 1929-1991, available at any newsagents shop.
* And finally, a fine view of the impressive Birmingham Free Library in Tolkien’s home city. It was at the top of New Street and thus a stone’s throw from Tolkien’s school at the time he was there. So its’s another Birmingham city-centre institution which — as with the Art Gallery and its major Pre-Raphaelite collection of paintings — one has to wonder about. Did the young Tolkien and his friends know it? Borrow books from it?
And here we see the northern end of the same Library (left edge) in the context of the north side of Chamberlain Square.
