Tolkien Gleanings #391

* A new rolling edition of the Journal of Tolkien Research has begun, with the first conference paper being Kristine Larsen’s “Deep Down Here by the Dark Water Lived Old Gollum”: The 1927 Public Opening of the Wookey Hole Show Caves and ‘The Hobbit'”. Freely available online.

Picture: “The Subterranean River” (aka, as a view in other photographic cards, ‘The Witch’s Kitchen, from the Sandbank’), Wookey Hole, 1931.

* A report on Bradley Birzer’s recent talk “Tolkien, Technology, and Magic” at the Saint Benedict Institute. The video recording is also on YouTube.

* The Everyday Life of Media Fans: living fannishly and the subjunctive mode in contemporary digital cultures (2026). An ethnographic PhD thesis from Belgium, in English… “The study presented in this book paints a detailed picture of what it means to live fannishly and gives insight into how imaginative modes and experiences are ingrained in contemporary digital life and cultures.” One of the areas of focus appears to be a “Tolkien-related Discord server” for fan-fiction writers. Freely available online.

* Details of a 2023 dissertation from a Philology dept. in Moscow, “The Evolution of the Ship as a Symbol and Worldbuilding Element in the Artistic Universe of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Not online, but there’s an informative English abstract. It sounds like something that, cut down a bit, might make an interesting article in the Journal of Tolkien Research.

* The final ‘farewell’ issue of the scholarly M.R. James journal Ghosts & Scholars has been published.

* Miriam Ellis offers a glimpse of Bilbo making his map of favorite walks, a picture which appears to be another taster for her… “forthcoming second book, A Shire Walking-Party”.

* And finally, samwise as found in a corner of Bosworth’s An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898)…