Tolkien Gleanings #315
Note: Due to growing censorship, I’m now 99% surfing with a VPN. I use Mullvad as the VPN and bounce out to the east coast of the USA. So when I say “freely available online” now, I mean for someone in the USA rather than here in the UK. Of various Tolkien sites, I find that only Walking Tree and the ‘Interactive Middle-earth Map’ sites are unreachable when using a VPN, with the map site giving a very obnoxious message to VPN users.
* A new Amon Hen No. 314 (August 2025) is available, for Tolkien Society members. The Editorial reveals they’ve finally found a new layout and design worker. Some Silmarillion focused lead articles, and among the other items are…
– Christopher Tolkien’s Lectures at Oxford: Bibliography.
– An all-too-short article on William, Tom and Bert (the trolls from The Hobbit), leading into a look at what can be known about trolls in general.
– A DIY article on how to make a hobbit-hole door.
* A new issue of Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (July 2025). Freely available online. Has a Finnish article which translates as “Spirituality in the fantasy fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien”, plus a clutch of book reviews…
– Review of The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
– Review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics.
– Review of Celebrating Tolkien’s Legacy.
– Review of Mapping Middle-earth.
* The new edition of the Spanish journal Selim: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature has a review of the Spanish translation of Tolkien’s Green Knight. Currently this open-access journal is down, unavailable either with or without a VPN.
* Signum University is to hold a three-day Moot here in the UK, Land of Dragons: How Myth Shapes Our Reality. Set for 3rd-5th October 2025, in Cardiff, South Wales. At present there’s a call for papers and session ideas. It will be possible to attend virtually, online, as well as in person.
* The regional U.S. news radio station TMJ4 has an article deriving from its ‘Milwaukee Tonight’ slot, “11,000 pages of Lord of the Rings drafts are in Marquette University’s archives”, profiling the archivist. Freely available online.
* The J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature 2025 is now… uploaded to Spotify. Rather an unfortunate choice, since Spotify is reportedly set to start deleting UK user accounts en masse. Doubly unfortunate since Zen Cho’s lecture was in part about censorship.
* New in the Protestant Christian magazine American Reformer, “Poetry and Monarchy in Tolkien”. Freely available online.
* New in The American Spectator “The Newest Doctor of the Church’s Influence on Catholic Literature”, focusing on Cardinal Newman’s influence on Tolkien.
* And finally, LOTRSilverCollections, a new Reddit sub-forum for those who collect LoTR merchandise and coins, if made with precious metals. Preciousss…