Tolkien Gleanings #349

* 70 years ago today, 20th October 1955, one might stroll down to the local bookshop to buy a pristine hardback of the just-published The Return of the King, and thus be able to finish reading The Lord of the Rings. At the same time one might have picked up copies of The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (UK: September 1955) and The Magician’s Nephew (UK: May 1955). Other classics of that year were then only available in the USA (Bradbury’s The October Country, and the first hardcover collection of R.E. Howard’s Conan), in Paris (Lolita), or were still awaited (Larkin’s first mature collection of poetry, dated October but not in bookshops until November).

* Dimitra Fimi’s blog has a new post considering “the conception of hobbits as children”.

* The latest edition of the podcast Tangible: Theology Learned and Lived is on “Tolkien’s Way”, with guests Dr. Charles Arand and Dr. Kent Burreson.

* A new book from a Bible scholar on Lewis, Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible. Due on 4th November 2025, according to Amazon UK. I also noted another forthcoming book, A Reader’s Guide to C.S. Lewis, due on 18th November 2025.

* I was amused to see that Tolkien’s friend Lewis has also become a fictional detective, via the ‘C.S. Lewis Investigates’ series of murder-mystery novels. The first of which appeared, seemingly to much acclaim from the critics of such things, back in April as The Mystery at Rake Hall. Although Tolkien-as-character has beaten Lewis to it by six months, being the protagonist of the novel Tolkien and The Dangerous Truth (2024).

* Some pleasing work on DeviantArt this week: ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’ by Numediteur, ‘Gollum’ by MooratSmith, ‘Fangorn Forest’ by LeopoldR (although the forest perhaps more suited to Sam, Frodo and Gollum skirting the wood as they approach the road to Cirith Ungol), and ‘Echoes of Gondolin in the Trenches’ by Xukarriere.

* And finally, the tireless British Fairies blog on “Early Accounts of British Faeries”.