Tolkien Gleanings #58.

* The pre-release covers are now available for the forthcoming biography by Holly Ordway, examining what can be known about Tolkien’s spiritual life. The book is set for a hardback release in August 2023, and now has a basic listing on Amazon UK.

* If you want to know why AI writing and assemblage is not yet fit for public display, just look at the bot-assembled Amazon page for the forthcoming book Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today (August 2023). The book is, apparently… “An authoritative take on the history of the vampire”. Good to know that Tolkien might yet rise from his grave and take revenge on those who have ravaged his work for mega-bucks (now there’s an idea for a pulp-shocker comedy movie…).

* Mapping Middle-earth: Tracing Environmental and Political Narratives in the Literary Geographies and Cartographies of J.R.R Tolkien’s Legendarium (2020). A PhD thesis, for the University of Edinburgh here in the UK. Freely available online…

Chapter 1: Hic Sunt Dracones: Historical Perspectives on Tolkien’s Cartography.
Chapter 2: Force of Nature: Mapping Environmental Concerns.
Chapter 3: Into the Abyss of Time: Geological and Temporal Mapmaking.
Chapter 4: This Land is My Land: Maps, Power Politics, and Imperialism.

* The Sound of Middle-earth: Music and Song among Races in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (2022). A Masters degree dissertation for Acadia University in remote Nova Scotia, Canada. Freely available online, with a structure which steps through each of the races in turn.

* New on Archive.org, free to borrow, Glee-Wood: Passages from Middle English Literature from the Eleventh Century to the Fifteenth (1949). A choice selection for a wider public, offered in English translation and with a pleasing design.

* And finally, I’ve tracked down “At The Tobacconist’s” on YouTube. This being the ’20th Lesson’ of the Linguaphone English Conversation (1930), a set of spoken-word audio discs and accompanying booklets for language learners. The digital version of the recording was taken offline by the British Library several years ago, and the Wayback Machine did not capture its streaming audio. A certain Mr. Tolkien also recorded the ’30th Lesson’ in this set, titled “Wireless” (i.e. early radio broadcasting). Thankfully this has also been saved on YouTube by a different user. Between these two clear recordings, and with the customer voice on the tobacconist’s shop trimmed out, there should be enough here for an AI voice-cloning of Tolkien’s voice. As it was in 1929, when he was in his prime.