* New unseen Tolkien family photos, early 1930s. Tolkien himself is not seen, and presumably he was the one making the pictures with the camera. The discoverer of the pictures says…. “I’ll be sending high res versions over to the Bodleian shortly”, but has kindly posted low-res versions on Reddit. Tolkien is known to have gone to Lamorna Cove in 1932, but there’s no way these pictures show Cornwall. The scene could be anywhere on a lowland English river, south of the Peak and east of Exeter. Though the distinctive waterside thatched boathouse, boat-type and willow-pollarding might be able to be cross-referenced to a postcard, and thus the location identified. My guess on that would be that one would start looking around Evesham, where his brother was living. Possibly also along the River Stour over in Worcestershire or near Oxford.
* A book from late last summer, and new to me, The Road to Fair Elfland: Tolkien On Fairy-stories: An Extended Commentary (September 2022). This appears to offer the text with…
“references to Tolkien’s precedents and sources for the themes he treated in his essay” and also examples of how the famous essay “proved to be influential or even ahead of its time in the decades following”
The book is on the Kindle, so the free 10% ebook sample should get you the complete preface.
* Kent State University Press has announced the book To Rule the Fate of Many: Truth, Lies, Pity and the Ring of Power (forthcoming). Thankfully it appears to be nothing to do with That TV Series, despite using a similar name. Seems to consider how … “Tolkien could encompass in his sympathy Christian religion and pagan mythology” and thus was able to craft a dynamic place in which he could deeply consider “truth, lies, pity” and bring them “onward to a more philosophical and theological treatment”.
* Tolkien’s Mythic Meaning: The Reader’s Ontological Encounters in The Lord of the Rings. A 2020 thesis for the University of Manchester, now available online.
* And finally, “Australians are LARPing”.
