Tolkien Gleanings #460

* Holly Ordway on “Tolkien and restoring the beauty of the Oxford Oratory” (Substack, but wholly free), which in Tolkien’s day was the Catholic parish church of St. Aloysius. Interior restoration has been underway since 2007, and this work moved into a major new phase in 2025…

“Although it has an unassuming brick facade [1875], the beautiful interior of the church would have been a visual delight to Tolkien, who loved intricate designs in the style of William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement. Indeed, he might well have noticed that the enamel, copper, and silver altar of the Lady Chapel was designed by Morris & Company. A double rank of statues of saints and angels curves above and to either side of the main altar; Tolkien would have observed among them his patron, St. John the Evangelist. […] St Aloysius is open for anyone to stop in, whether it’s for some quiet reflection in a beautiful space, to appreciate a place that was important in the life of J.R.R. Tolkien, for a bit of personal prayer or meditation, or to see what a reverently done Catholic Mass is like.”

Even better, Ordway states that this Oxford church now holds to the… “same Oratorian ethos that so deeply formed the young Tolkien”. The restoration target is £3.3 million, and donations are welcomed.

* I’ve restored and colourised this old postcard view of the entrance from the street to St. Aloysius. Judging by the look of the original, and the cultivation of arboreal growth, the view is probably contemporary with the young Tolkien.

* Amarillo Film Festival in Texas has screened the first finished 60 minute episode of The Forge of Friendship: J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis, a planned five-part series. This is the fruit of some ten years of production, which has involved scores of interviews with scholars, and extensive re-enactment location shooting with costumed actors.

* From Brazil and currently screening there, the personal documentary travel film Em Busca de Tolkien: Uma Odisseia Criativa (2026) (‘In Search of Tolkien: A Creative Odyssey’).

* In Newcastle in the north of England, the major loan exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Poetry is set to be… “the first large-scale exhibition to explore the connections between Pre-Raphaelite art and poetry”. Ticketed, with a substantial entry price. There is also a published catalogue. Runs from 17th October 2026 – 13th February 2027.

* The Oxford C.S. Lewis Society has posted the list of autumn 2026 talks. Among talks on Lewis, Williams and Benson, the talk “The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the OED — Twenty Years On” is set for 24th November 2026.

* “Oxford and the Rise of Fantasy Literature”, a residential summer school course at The University of Oxford from 28th June – 16th July 2027. Applications appear to be open.

* And finally, aspiring springle-ringers may appreciate a forthcoming event at the Weston Library of the Bodleian in Oxford, “A Day of 18th-Century Country Dance”, on Sunday 8th November 2026. Free, and booking now. A talk, a book launch, and three dance workshops. Also of tangential Tolkien interest — at the same venue and on the same day — is Plain Things: Wonders, an exhibition on the history… “of how paying attention to nature can make plain things into wonders”, 5th November – 29th August 2027.

Tolkien Gleanings #459

* A new issue of the journal Mythlore is now online and freely available, the Fall/Winter 2026 issue. This includes, among other items…

   – “With Axe, Knife, Sting, and Tooth: The Enduring Wounds of Gawain and Frodo.”
   – “Dreaming of Bag End: The Hobbit and Medieval Dream-Poetry.”
   – “Oxford at War: ‘Leaf by Niggle’ as a Wartime Work, Part 1.”

Books reviews include, among others, a review of Tolkien’s Glee: A Reading of the Songs in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

* The Dwarrow Scholar has a new and long article on “Dwarvish Astronomy: Under Stone, Under Stars”.

* From the Oxford Tolkien Network, a new article on the preparations for the Tolkien Memorial at Westminster Abbey. Also, I note that their website says that the seminar talks have been put on hold… “In Michaelmas Term 2026, there will be no Tolkien seminar” presentations. But there will be one guest lecture.

* John Garth is now embarking on his Oxford Tolkien DPhil, researching “Myth-making and war from 1919 to the Atomic Era: Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in its time”.

* Holly Orway’s Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-Earth Beyond the Middle Ages (2021) has just appeared in Spanish translation.

* The latest issue of the journal Fandom | Cultures | Research has a book review for The Politics of Fantasy: Magic, Children‘s Literature, and Fandom in Putin’s Russia (2025). The focus of the book is very much on Harry Potter and its franchise, but the reviewer notes in passing… “His analysis of how The­ Lord­ of­ the ­Rings prepared the ground for fantasy in Russia is strong”.

* Forthcoming from Bloomsbury in November 2026, The Ancient World in Rock Music: Playing the Classics in the 1960s and 1970s. Possibly somewhat Tolkien relevant is the chapter titled “Magic, Mythology, and Nostalgia in Marc Bolan’s Carnivalesque World”.

* A pre-print for the academic book chapter “Fear of the Forest: Cultural Xylophobia from Pliny to Proulx”.

* And finally, I can add one more old use of the word “bilbo”. Many of the pre-Tolkien uses have of course been surveyed. Among others, by Mark T. Hooker in the lead essay in his essay collection The Hobbitonian Anthology. But I don’t believe the following item from England in 1599 has been noted before. Half way though Shakespeare’s well known play Henry V (1599) the audience encounters the English King’s future French wife, the young Catherine of Valois. She is in a castle garden, being taught the rudiments of English by her nurse. She repeats the body-part names she has just heard for the first time, and comically mis-names the elbow, e.g…

   KATHERINE: Ecoutez [listen]: d’hand, de fingre, de nailes, d’ arma, de bilbow.

She then mis-names it a second time, despite having been corrected the first time, for even more audience chuckles.

For a stage audience the word would have been heard as “bilbo”. Admittedly Tolkien was apparently rather averse to Shakespeare’s ‘history plays’, so it seems an unlikely unconscious source. But I thought I’d add it to the pile of “bilbo” possibilities.

Tolkien Gleanings #458

* Local newspaper the Stroud Times has “‘Unique’ J.R.R. Tolkien book from Oxford university days up for auction in Stonehouse”.

“The copy of The Wanderings of Peoples by anthropologist A.C. Haddon contains Tolkien’s handwritten ownership inscription, dated June 1914, when he was a student at Exeter College, Oxford.”

The book is not listed in the second edition of Tolkien’s Library. The firm dating of acquisition suggests that he read the book over the 1914 holidays, most likely as background reading for coming exams. If purchased new then the book would have been the second edition, published by Cambridge University Press in 1912. Haddon provided a short authoritative overview of the world’s ancient migrations as they were known in 1911, prior to DNA technology and modern archaeology. “Europe” is treated in ten pages. One wonders why Tolkien felt the need to own a copy, when the university surely had several copies of it?

* Pre-ordering now, Signum University’s documentary The Stories That Come To Us – A Conversation with Verlyn Flieger. The film premiered at Oxonmoot 2026, and there’s now a trailer on YouTube. The $10 pre-order page is online, but can currently offer no shipping date.

* Leo Carruthers of the Sorbonne discussed “L’Histoire de Kullervo”: laboratoire de toute l’oeuvre de J.R.R. Tolkien ? on Radio France’s France Culture, a few days ago. The programme asked if Kullervo could have served as… “a laboratory for the entire work of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Freely available online, but possibly region-blocked — the ‘play it again’ audio doesn’t play for me.

* From South America’s DLN, in English, the long and thoughtful article “The Unexpected Miracle: Tolkien’s Eucatastrophe as a Philosophy of Resistance for Modern Man and Society”. Freely available online.

* “Tolkien’s Notion of Fantasy, Creation, and the Anthropocentric in Tarkovsky’s Solaris”. Freely available online, albeit in an MDPI journal.

* British auction house Sotheby’s have the page “A Guide to Identifying J.R.R. Tolkien First Editions”, dated 8th October 2026. I seem to recall something similar earlier this year, but perhaps that was from another auction house? This page appears to be new.

* The latest Journal of Folklore Research Reviews has a long and detailed review of Fairy Encounters in Medieval England: Landscape, Folklore, and the Supernatural (2024). The reviewer notes that the book also covers material from Wales and Scotland. Freely available online.

* The conference on Tolkien’s invented languages has a hint at a date for 2028… “close to the beginning of August” and in Chartres, France. I see that their Arda Philology 8 (2025) is available, the volume being the 2019 conference proceedings. Articles include “‘Unrecorded’ Germanic: An Art-language for England”, among others.

* “How Did Hobbits Dance? Reconstructing Tolkien’s springle-ring”.

* And finally, talking of vigorous springle-ringing… the British version of the Brandywine Festival now has 2027 dates. The festival will return to Shropshire from 9th-12th September 2027.

Tolkien Gleanings #457

* New in the latest rolling Journal of Tolkien Research, the article “Ornamental Letters in Tolkien’s Manuscripts”, which makes comparisons with medieval lettering.

* A new book in Italian by Gianfranco de Turris, to be published as an ebook in a few days, Il Professore Che Amava i Draghi: Miti e simboli in J.R.R. Tolkien (2026) (‘The Professor Who Loved Dragons: Myths and Symbols in J.R.R. Tolkien’)…

“This book brings together 31 of his texts — including articles, prefaces, essays, miscellaneous writings, and, in the appendix, an ironic play aptly titled Teatrino Tolkieniano, all published between 1979 and 2026, along with a complete bibliography of his writings on Tolkien from 1968 to the present.”

* And forthcoming from France, with a November 2026 release date, Michael Devaux’s 640-page J.R.R. Tolkien et la foi: La consonance chretienne de la Terre du Milieu (‘J.R.R. Tolkien and Faith: The Christian Undertones of Middle-earth’). Not yet listed on the Editions Salvator website.

* From Russia, the journal article “Dreams In The Lost Road And The Notion Club Papers” (2025). English abstract and bibliography, Russian PDF. Freely available for download.

* From Ukraine, the short conference paper Inhabiting Middle-earth: The Evolution of Howard Shore’s Musical Worlds in The Two Towers (2026). In English, and freely available online.

* On Reddit, “I visited the birthplace of J.R.R. Tolkien in Bloemfontein. It is now a guesthouse called the Hobbit Hotel”.

* The Mythopoeic Society’s domain www.mythsoc.org appears to be gone, and the whole site is now “403 Forbidden”. Access through a VPN was also tried, with the same result.

* Of possible interest to Gleanings readers, an excellent local freeware Windows copy-editor and proof-reader, which can handle 60,000+ words easily. Tested by myself, and I find it checks a novel in about an hour and also interfaces very nicely with Microsoft Word. Forbidden to the anti-AI zealots, obviously, but many will welcome such tools.

* And finally, newly on eBay, a picture of the ford on the Green Lane (one of the entrances to Sarehole, Birmingham) as seen in winter. On a postcard postmarked February 1910, thus it was likely photographed 1909 or 1910 — and thus is seen much as the young Tolkien brothers would have known it in winter. Here restored and colourised.

Tolkien Gleanings #456

* From the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, their third scholarly book on Tolkien. Down from the door where it began: 70 years of the Lord of the Rings (2026) is this time in English, and follows Portuguese volumes issued in 2019 and 2021. All freely available in Open Access, as is the way in South America.

2019 had, among others (titles translated)…

   – Tolkien and His References.
   – Wystan Hugh Auden, Reader of Tolkien: Heroic Quest, Realism, and Imagination.
   – Lexical Choice and Stylistic Expressiveness in The Lord of the Rings.

2021 had, among others (titles translated)…

   – The Construction of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Public Figure as a Monument.
   – The Philologist and His Boy: Christopher Tolkien, Co-author of Middle-earth.
   – “The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun”: Celticism and Memory in Tolkien’s Works.
   – Celebrating Christmas in England: Dickens, Tolkien, and the Christmas Spirit.

2026 has, among others (in English)…

   – More Hobbits: The Critical Reception of The Fellowship of the Ring.
   – The Middle-earth Manuscripts: Pseudotranslation as a Creative Foundation.
   – Christopher Tolkien’s Calligraphy in The Lord of the Rings.
   – Understanding Medievalism Through J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium.

* The Introduction and Bibliography from the new book Management Lessons from The Lord of the Rings – Organization Theory, Leadership and Sustainability on Middle-earth (2026) are freely available online. There is no Kindle ebook with ‘10% free’, so this appears to be the only way to read the Introduction.

* Thoughts on Tolkien considers books recently read, or newly arrived on the doorstep. He notes…

“Tolkien’s edition of The Old English Exodus is a very important text in Tolkien-studies that was often overlooked. Thankfully, now that it is available in the second Myths and Legends box set and more widely available, it will hopefully become a source for renewed and in-depth studies by Tolkien scholars and fans.”

* Pencilled in for a Christmas 2026 release, the book Tolkien Ludens: Narrative, Myth, and Play in Middle-earth.

* Due in a few weeks, the illustrated young children’s book The Boy Behind the Wardrobe: How C.S. Lewis Grew Up to Create Narnia (2026).

* And finally, a fine new hand-drawn remake of the Lord of the Rings map. Freely available online, as a 25Mb 300dpi .JPG file. The size is such that a wall-map should be able to be printed, which might make for an interesting school project – how to print a wall-map without a huge wall-sized printer.

Tolkien Gleanings #455

* Hammond & Scull have issued their latest Addenda and Corrigenda. Including a lengthy page of corrections for The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien.

* Fine Books, on a forthcoming auction 1963 Tolkien letter which has a mention of the word ‘cram’ as found in “Perry-the-Winkle” (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil)… “Cramsome” is merely hobbitese for “filling” (Tolkien). The auctioneers at the Swann Galleries elaborate further. Their statement that cram was not in 1963 “in common use by English speakers” is true, yet at that time it would still have been understood at private schools and some universities — in which lax students would have to “cram” for their exams. I would imagine one could also find it still in use in the school-story based weekly comics of the time, in that context, and of course in the Molesworth books which were widely read by children. Swann do usefully dig up the following, which suggests that Gimli’s “cram” was possibly a nod to an English Bible produced only five years after the writing of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight…

“In a 1382 edition of the Bible (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), “cramcake” is used to mean a kind of pancake.”

Specifically in the famous Wycliffe Bible, in “Exodus”. There is also a possible food reference in the Ancrene Riwle which Tolkien would have had to investigate, “Gif heo mei sparien eni poure shreaden [shiue]” (“If she might spare me a poor shred”), perhaps implying some form of tear-able and share-able plain cake.

* Artist Matej Cadil considers “Service, Sacrifice, and the Artist’s Calling in Leaf by Niggle”.

* Elfenomeno on “The Hobbit illustrated by Maurice Sendak: the edition that never existed”.

* The Catholic magazine The Tablet has the article “Memorial to J.R.R. Tolkien to be unveiled in Westminster Abbey”. Appears to be free online.

“Stephen Broadbent of Broadbent studio in Chester designed the memorial depicting a tree in a forest […] It will be fashioned by a team including designers, artisans and engineers from Silverlining Furniture in Wrexham.”

* And finally, on eBay, a vintage postcard with a fine embossed rendering of the arms of Tolkien’s Exeter College. Bird, key and shelled molluscs, hmmm… now where have I seen Tolkien use that combination before? And those wavy lines might be interpreted as moonlight.

The post rate for a postcard was ½d until 1918, so this is presumably pre-1918.

Tolkien Gleanings #454

* New from Marquette University, the Tolkien Fanzine Dataset, 1967-2017, with the bulk of material indexed being from 1969-79. Freely available, as a .CSV dataset and an accompanying .PDF fanzine titles list.

“This dataset reveals the heretofore hidden contents of fanzines […] it supplements the earlier Tolkien Fandom Review by S. Gary Hunnewell that discussed fanzines created through 1968. The dataset provides an item level index of the fanzines’ content and is intended to aid researchers in Fan Studies.”

* Now freely available, the schedule and PDFs/videos from Mythcon 54 (July 2026). Too many Tolkien and Inklings items to list, but don’t overlook “New Info on The Hunt for the Ring”…

“With Bill Fliss’s assistance, Chad plots the paths of all characters, including individual Nazgul, throughout Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings.”

The talk is also available as a YouTube recording. And, should you be considering Christmas presents already, Mythcon 54 also had a survey of “Middle-earth Inspired Chess Sets”.

* Westminster Abbey to honour J.R.R. Tolkien in Poet’s Corner…

“A major new memorial celebrating Tolkien’s creative vision and storytelling by artist Stephen Broadbent will be revealed at a dedication ceremony in Spring 2027”.

* The Beyond Bree Calendar 2027 is now pre-ordering. This year it… “celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Silmarillion”.

* Matej Cadil has posted his Oxonmoot 2026 impressions online.

* On the DiscipleDojo podcast, Holly Ordway sets about Debunking J.R.R. Tolkien Urban Legends (Part One). Part Two is due tomorrow.

* A YouTube recording of Bradley Birzer’s recent Tolkien Seminar: On Fairy Stories.

* Some details of an undergraduate final dissertation from eastern Europe, Female Figures and Their Impact in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Fall of Arthur (2026)

* A 20 minute YouTube documentary on The Sword of St. Michael, an Anduril-like flaming sword that Tolkien would have been aware of. This is St. Michael the Archangel, the leader of all angels, defender of the Catholic Church, patron saint of the sea.

* And finally, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford will shortly open a major exhibition on the history of the various incarnations of Aphrodite / Venus in antiquity.

Tolkien Gleanings #453

* A new issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research is now underway. Freely available online. Includes, among others…

   – “Tolkien’s Philological Imagination – On Aelfwine’s Spelling, the AB Language and the Inner Consistency of Philological Reality”.
   – A book review of Tolkien’s Medievalism in Ruins: The Function of Relics and Ruins in Middle-earth (2025).

* The Worlds of Christopher Tolkien is a new scholarly/biographical book due in November 2026. Includes, among other chapters…

   – “Christopher Tolkien and the Maps of Middle-earth: Between Fidelity and Reinvention”
   – “Christopher Tolkien and the Elvish Languages: Five Decades of Work”

TolkienGuide has the full contents-list for the book.

* Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal has issued Supplement 1, effectively a book. Age of Discovery: Essays from the Inaugural Undiscovered C.S. Lewis Conference (2026). The lead chapter is Holly Ordway asking “What Did Tolkien Really Think about Narnia?”. Freely available online.

* Tolkien Annotations, a new section at the Digital Tolkien Project.

* In Portuguese, the Masters dissertation O espaco urbano na obra de J.R.R. Tolkien. Analise da ideia de cidade em Minas Tirith (2025) (‘Urban space in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien: An analysis of the idea of ​​the city of Minas Tirith’). Freely available online, with an English abstract.

* An Oxonmoot 2026 report, “Elfenomeno in Oxford”. On walking… “I’m not used to walking so much, and I wasn’t wearing appropriate footwear”, which resulted in painful limping thereafter. I’d suggest: two pairs of hiking socks with anti-blister inners, proper moulded and pressure-point padded innersoles, good moleskin plasters on vulnerable toes and heels. With boots one side larger to accommodate all that, and boots well worn-in.

* A report with excellent photos, from the Brandywine Festival.

* Birmingham Oratory tickets are available, for the annual Birmingham heritage open days.

* Popping up on eBay, The Fox & Hounds pub at Great Haywood in Staffordshire. I can’t find any Tolkien connection, but it was a relatively small village and someone may know of one.

* Novelist Lazlo Ferran considers The Ridgeway (England’s oldest trackway) as a possible Tolkien inspiration. Part One and Part Two.

* In Italian, L’Indiscreeto magazine has the new long article “Tolkien contro Tolkien”, considering how “Tolkien has won” but also simultaneously lost to the marketing machines and pap-merchants. Freely available online, in Italian.

* Miriam Ellis is interviewed in the Stockholm Tolkien Society magazine, and she offers a free PDF for the article.

* Black Metal magazine has a new five-part article series on Tolkien and Black Metal.

* And finally, Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings, as an interactive map.