Tolkien Gleanings #253

* A new podcast interview with the leading Tolkien collector ‘Trotter’…

“Stef and Jude are joined by Tolkien collecting expert and moderator of the Tolkien Collector’s Guide, Andrew ‘Trotter’ Ferguson. Andrew tells us about his experience collecting and sharing the Professor’s material culture.”

* Bombadil as seen through Indian Hindu eyes, in the new scholarly paper from India “Tom Bombadil: A Challenge to Dualism in Tolkien’s Legendarium through the Indian Metaphysical Lens”. Freely available online.

* “Old English Goddesses, Lost and Found” an introductory online study-day on Friday 7th February 2025. There’s a full outline, and it’s obviously not going to be neo-pagan mumbo-jumbo. Booking now.

* Green Book blog has a new blog post on details of Christopher Tolkien’s wartime service, followed by a short list of the author’s current projects. His list includes “Animals during wartime in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work and life”. Springing to mind there are: i) carrier pigeons as battle-front messengers (birds as messengers in The Hobbit and as Saruman’s spies in LoTR); ii) labouring pack-horses (Bill the pony); and iii) likely encounters had by soldiers with ferocious dogs in a battle-torn French countryside (Farmer Maggot’s dogs).

* The Oddest Inkling offers a detailed outline of the Inklings lectures for his forthcoming online course for The Great Courses / The Teaching Company.

* Names and World-building in Fantasy & Science Fictional Universes, a panel to be hosted at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in January 2025. To include the paper “Tolkien’s vs. Rowling’s Names: Historical vs. Modern Reality; Elvish vs. Humorous Inventions”.

* The latest edition of Midland History journal has “Mercian Charms: From The Lair of the White Worm to Penda’s Fen”. This looks “at the mythopoeic reinvention of Anglo-Saxon Mercia” via Bram Stoker’s imaginative but unsuccessful final novel The Lair of the White Worm (1911) and the ‘earth mysteries’ TV-film Penda’s Fen (1974). Tolkien was of course also fascinated by ancient Mercia, although here the article strains in the opposite political direction to Tolkien. The article is part of a special issue of the journal on ‘The Haunted Midlands’ and publisher Taylor & Francis has it as free-to-access, at least for now.

So far as I can tell, Tolkien did not read The Lair of the White Worm (1911). It was published in early November 1911, and by that time he was busy with his first year at Oxford. He might have been disappointed if he had encountered it later (“utterly ruins a magnificent idea” — Lovecraft). Though, in trying to discover if he read it or not, I found mention that… “some of the fairy tales collected in [Stoker’s] Under the Sunset (1882) also have a sinister edge”. I imagine that a book of original fairy tales by the author of Dracula might have interested the Inklings, had they known of it.

* The Silver Key blog discusses the creative uses of King Arthur, specifically comparing Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur with a similar use by the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden.

* And finally, the Foreshadowed and Foresung blog has a long and pleasingly-illustrated appreciation of the pioneering Tolkien artists The Brothers Hildebrandt.

Tolkien Gleanings #252

* A review of the recent Christopher Tolkien conference…

“Two papers, by Sara Brown and Kristine Larsen, discussed the Athrabeth, a key text in the legendarium [1959, in HoME 10: Morgoth’s Ring, pages 301-366], analyzing all of the layers of writing and the choices involved in editing it, and they and Verlyn Flieger emphasized even [Christopher’s] courage in publishing this thing, which cut down to the bedrock of the fictional universe and touched the author’s own deepest religious beliefs. I got the impression, listening to Sara and Kris speak and reading the chat function, that the mere existence of the Athrabeth was news to a lot of the attendees.”

* There’s a Tolkien chapter in the new McFarland book From Soldier to Storyteller: Essays on World War Veterans Who Became Famous Children’s Authors (2024), titled “J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973): War, Fatherhood and Writing for Children”.

* A probable Tolkien article in the latest edition of the Biblical scholarship journal The Expository Times, “Reign of Christ” ($ paywall). There is no abstract, but judging by the title and introduction, it seems likely to relate events in LoTR to six Biblical passages.

* A well-reviewed new book from Oxford University Press, The Victorians and English Dialect: Philology, Fiction, and Folklore (2024). A review in The Critic says the book is accessible to the general reader of British history, and as such it may appeal to readers of Gleanings. Especially since it tells the story of a significant aspect of Tolkien’s scholarly field, as it developed prior to 1905. The “fiction” of the title is of the earthy Thomas Hardy sort, not fantasy.

* On YouTube, a coming-shortly fan reading of “The Death of Saint Brendan” by J.R.R. Tolkien. Though I’m not sure which version, as there are evidently several…

“[1945-46, Tolkien] writes the poem The Death of Saint Brendan (*Imram), producing much initial working, four finished manuscripts, and a typescript. He includes the alliterative verse retelling of the legend of King Sheave, previously associated with The Lost Road, but writes it out as if it were prose. At some later time, he will develop the poem (as Imram) in three further type-scripts.” — from the ‘Companion & Guide: Chronology’.

* This week The European Conservative has a long and timely essay on “Mordor in England”, responding to a first-time reading of LoTR and especially to ‘The Scouring of the Shire’.

* And finally, news that The Hungry Hobbit cafe in Moseley has finally closed. Moseley being a small district that long served as the city of Birmingham’s redoubt for the ‘muesli and Marx’ brigade. But I imagine that some Tolkien tourists may also have sought out the cafe over the years. The local newspaper reports that The Hungry Hobbit, forced to become ‘The Hungry Hob’ after legal threats, has now been replaced by an American-style fried chicken shop. Hopefully this is not named The Lord of the Wings.

Tolkien Gleanings #251

* The latest issue of the rolling Journal of Tolkien Research is beginning to fill up, and now comes the first peer-reviewed article, “The Land of Fairies of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* The major new book The Island: W.H. Auden and the Last of Englishness focuses on the poet’s biography prior to his departure for America. With special and newly-illuminating focus on his roots in south Birmingham and his time as a teacher at nearby Malvern, as the young Auden yearned for a “lyrical nationalism” and for recognition as a national poet. Given his similar roots, interests and trajectory — and also his later direct connection with Tolkien at a critical time in the birth of LoTR — this acclaimed new book may interest Gleanings readers.

* The blog jwwrightauthor has some new “Thoughts on Moorcock’s Criticism of Tolkien and Other Fantasists”. In another blog, SteadyHQ, we’re offered another reason why Moorcock got it so wrong. Like many other pungent leftist ‘critics’ of LoTR in the first 40 or so years after publication, it now appears that “Moorcock never really read LoTR”.

* Tolkien Notes 21 (end of October 2024) from the Tolkien scholars Hammond & Scull.

* The World Fantasy Convention 2025, to be held in Brighton on the south coast of the UK, has announced its two themes. ‘Lyrical Fantasy’ and ’50 Years of British Fantasy and Horror’. The latter presumably being 1975-2025.

* Shortly to be released to online streaming on Arte.tv, the feature-length TV documentary Tolkien: The True Story of the Rings (2024)… “This documentary explores the real places in England and elsewhere that provided inspiration for Tolkien”.

* For the real thing including muddy boots, Imagining Middle-earth: A Journey Through Tolkien’s England with Michael Drout, during October 2025. Start at Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire, and end in Oxford.

* The Walking Tree Publishers website has ejected its recent cyber-gremlins. The ‘Latest News’ page now has new links to three free PDF reviews of Germanic Heroes, Courage, and one for Fate: Northern Narratives of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Legendarium and Binding them all: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien and His Works.

* Tolkien’s old university college is celebrating 30 years of Exeter’s musical organ, with ‘An evening of organ music inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’. Set for 27th February 2025.

* Tolkien & Lewis’s “Eagle and Child pub in Oxford set to host public consultation”, reports This Is Oxfordshire. The consultation event has been and gone (21st November), but the article has interior and side-alley pictures, plus developer pictures of what the famous pub might look like after the roof-fixing and renovation.

* And finally, an illustration of the perils of not being on Twitter. I’ve published an interview with him, and read his biography, but until today I had no idea about Elon Musk and Tolkien.

Tolkien Gleanings #250

* Now online, four presentations from Doxamoot 2024. Freely downloadable in .MP3 format are…

   – “‘Like Rain on the Mountain’: Theodoric, Beowulf, Theoden, and Tolkien’s Elegy for Northern Courage”.

   – “Pentecost at the Stone of Erech: Oathbreakers and Covenant Keepers in the Legendarium”.

   – “‘We heard of the horns in the hills ringing’: Musical memory of the Rohirrim in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings“.

   – “Love’s Obligation: Deceit and Truth: The Divide Between Virtue and Vice in Tolkien”.

* A new podcast interview with Graham McAleer, author of Tolkien, Philosopher of War.

* Gleanings previously noted the latest issue of the open-access Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, with its lead article “Hautaamistavat J.R.R. Tolkienin fantasiafiktiossa” (‘Burial customs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy fiction’). Yet I overlooked the same issue’s review of Nole Hyarmenillo: An Anthology of Iberian Scholarship on Tolkien. Also note that Fafnir editors have a new call-for-papers for the June 2025 issue, published a month or so ago with a submission deadline of 31st December 2024.

* A call-for papers for the two-day conference “C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien: The Promise of Christian Fairytales”, set for California in August 2025. Deadline is 15th March 2025.

* A new 2024 issue of the open-access Journal of Gods and Monsters. No Tolkien, but it may interest some.

* The BARS Review has a call for contributors and can supply review copies of The Romantic Spirit in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and Romanticism and Speculative Realism, among others.

* A call for book chapters, for From Desolation to Idyllic Habitations: Exploring the Landscapes of Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture. A deadline of 20th December 2024, for what looks like a 2026 book.

* A new review in Spanish of the book Tolkien revisitado: 50 anos despues de su viaje a Valinor (2024) (‘Tolkien Revisited: 50 years after his journey to Valinor’), in the latest edition of the open-access journal Doxa Comunicacion.

* And finally, The People Under the Hill is a series of alternative history novels. This month has seen the release of the second book, Tolkien and The Dangerous Truth. The covers have abysmal typography but the blurb makes it sound like a lot of erudite and contrarian fun, beginning with… “What if Tolkien’s Oxford Dictionary work during the summer of 1919 were only a cover story?” Anyway, it’s a substantial new ‘Tolkien as character’ novel and there’s a 10% free preview for Kindle ebooks. So have a look for yourself. [Update: I’ve now read and enjoyed the first novel in the series, and have high hopes for this second novel].

Tolkien Gleanings #249

* I see that a new issue of the rolling Journal of Tolkien Research is underway, with the first posted essay being “Some notes on Seth Kreeger’s “Metaphysical Considerations in Ea””. Freely available online.

* Alas, not me examines “The Repentance of Angels: a Curious Departure in Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* We now have On Tolkien and Theology: Part II in which… “Douglas Estes joins the podcast once again to discuss the second volume of a collection of essays he edited on theology in the works and worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien.” Part one of this podcast interview was posted back in February 2024. Freely available online.

* Forthcoming from Kent State University Press, the academic book Finding the Numinous: An Ecocritical Look at Dune and the Lord of the Rings, due at the end of February 2025. In 176-pages the author suggests that…

“these imagined worlds’ environments are sacred spaces fundamental to understanding these texts and their authors’ purposes. [The author] applies Tolkien’s three functions of fantasy — recovery, escape, and consolation — to demonstrate how both authors’ works are intrinsically connected to their ecocritical messages and overarching moral philosophies.”

* A review of the “first publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s collected poems”, with some additional advice on the book’s potential as a Christmas present…

“be forewarned: this book is not for the faint of heart. Its massive scope, and the academic presentation of the material, are better suited to the Tolkien scholar than the casual reader — certainly not the one who leapfrogs the songs in The Lord of the Rings.”

* Freely available on YouTube, “Lewis, Tolkien, and the Founding of the Inklings”… “In this charming conversation, host Eric Metaxas interviews philologist Simon Horobin on his new book C.S. Lewis’s Oxford.”

* Here in the UK the editors of our venerable Victoria County History series invite new original ghost stories, presumably related to the sort of precise British local history that the VCH volumes so ably supply. I can imagine a tale in which the shade of Tolkien appears, perhaps peeved by a mistake in explicating some tree-ish place-name.

* And finally, lucky University of Maryland students are able to take a two-week “Tolkien & Lewis in Oxford” study-and-visits course in England, in July 2025. Including visits to… “Birmingham, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution”… hmmm, well… I think Ironbridge and the Black Country might have something to say about that claim. Perhaps a short lecture for the students on “Gullible tourists, profitable places, and the invention of tradition in England” might be suitably enlightening, detailing the ways in which the invention of tradition has long been a popular English tradition.

Tolkien Gleanings #248

* Due in a few days from Cambridge University Press, the academic book Theology and the Mythic Sensibility: Human Myth-Making and Divine Creativity. The blurb is short and unhelpful, but a text found elsewhere reveals that Tolkien is discussed. The cover appears to use artwork by Ian Miller.

* New at The European Conservative magazine, the long essay “Swallowed by the Dragon: Monstrous Meanings in Tolkien’s Stories”.

* Another set of long online lectures in which Rachel Fulton-Brown sets about exploring Tolkien. Her ‘The Forge of Tolkien’ set was previously paywalled, but is now being slowly and freely posted to YouTube. This batch of releases includes ‘On Fairy Stories’, ‘Magic Words’, ‘The Olde Speech’, ‘The Voice of Saruman’, and several more.

* J.R.R. Jokien Essays Vol. I – 2023. A new ebook of essays from the “humorous, sometimes earnest” Jokien with Tolkien blog, previously paywalled at Substack/Patreon. Judging by the titles, I assume the essays are from the “earnest” side of the venture.

* In the USA, a travelling stage production I don’t think I’d noticed before. Christmas with C.S. Lewis is… “set during a 1962 visit to Lewis by holidaying Americans”. Judging by the blurb it also has flashbacks featuring Tolkien.

* The latest open-access Journal for Religion, Film and Media is themed around ‘Escaping the Moment: Time Travel as a Negotiation of Transcendence’ (November 2024). The issue also has a call-for-papers for a future issue on ‘Death, Loss and Mourning in Film and Media’.

* Seemingly newly ingested at The Free Library, a full-text run of the journal Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature (1997-2024). Has a couple of Tolkien and Lewis articles.

* And finally, a new and pleasing page of hobbit penmanship from MatejCadil, “Oliphaunt”.

Tolkien Gleanings #247

* The Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference now has the talks programme online. An all-star Tolkien event. Talks include, among others…

   – “It is dear to my heart”: An art-oriented recollection of a correspondence with Christopher Tolkien (1982-1988).
   – Christopher Tolkien as Medieval Scholar.
   – Christopher Tolkien and ‘the Goths and the Huns’.
   – Continuing Christopher Tolkien’s Work in a Digital Age.

* New at Atla blog, “Yielding New Perspectives on Tolkien: An Interview with Archivist Catherine McIlwaine”.

* Voyages dans les mondes de Tolkien (‘Voyages in the Worlds of Tolkien’), new from France. It appears to be a 144-page one-off book-a-zine from the glossy French travel magazine Geo. The quickie AI-generated cover doesn’t inspire confidence that it’s an authorised publication. One Amazon review states that there are a number of errors of biographical fact, and its interview with the French nation’s current Tolkien publisher somehow managed to overlook twenty years of work on Tolkien by Vincent Ferre.

* Addiction in The Lord of the Rings and the real world: insights for physicians. A short report in a medical journal, on a conference paper of note…

“At OMED24, this theme was brought to life as James H. Berry, DO, an addiction psychiatrist, and Tolkien scholar Lisa Coutras Terris, PhD, explored how the forces that ensnare characters in Tolkien’s work mirror the real-world grip of addiction.”

* Forthcoming in 2025, The Gospel of Gollum by Italian scholar Ivano Sassanelli. The book will consider…

“Gollum as a possible exemplification or personification of the passage from the Gospel of Luke: “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Luke 12,34)? To answer this question, we will use an academic approach tasked with showing some of the most important aspects of Gollum’s life and [drawing on] Italian Tolkien scholarship.”

* An online continuing-education course at Harvard on “Tolkien’s Library”, set for spring 2025.

* An online seminar set for August 2025, More Perilous and Fair: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy… “Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the publication of Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien”.

* New on YouTube, Tolkien, Lord, and Liturgy: An Interview with Dr. Ben Reinhard.

* New on Archive.org, the Greenwood guide A Century of Welsh Myth in Children’s Literature (1998). Now out-of-print and with a few paper copies available used at £50+.

* One of the many Black Friday sales is from publisher Harper Collins, the key publisher of official Tolkien books. Also, news of a forthcoming Tolkien ‘Myths and Legend’ Harper Collins box-set. Due in June 2025, it will include Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Though in what version I’m not yet sure.

* And finally, can Harper Collins and the Estate please consider J.R.R. Tolkien’s Complete Book of the Dwarves and Dwarven-lore. It doesn’t exist. It should and could, I suggest.

Tolkien Gleanings #246

* Several things happened in America this week. A sudden and unexpected national shortage of therapy-puppies, and the election of a new U.S. Vice-President who tells the enquiring media… “A lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien”.

* The forthcoming French book Les Mondes de Christopher Tolkien now has a page on Amazon UK, as a £14 ebook for pre-order. No table-of-contents, as yet.

* A short review of the young children’s picture-book Painting Wonder: How Pauline Baynes Illustrated the Worlds of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien…

“Baynes is presented as a relatable character whose quiet, dreamy perseverance with the art she loved enabled her to serve her country as well as herself. By emphasizing the roadblocks Baynes overcame to finally reach the pinnacle of her career as an illustrator, the story helps readers understand that it is okay if your path through life is not straight and simple.”

* A long review of the new book Oxford’s War 1939–1945…

“The vast New Bodleian Library building, not formally opened until 1946, became a vault for national valuables, an air-raid shelter and the headquarters of the remarkable British Red Cross Prisoner of War Postal Book Service, run by Ethel Herdman. The Service sent reading matter to the thousands of British and Commonwealth ‘kriegies’ languishing in Axis [Germany, Japan, Italy] prison camps, as well as exam papers. The English literature [exam] scripts were marked by Professor J.R.R. Tolkien.”

I imagine this will be a useful shelf-companion to Garth’s forthcoming book on the influence of the Second World War on The Lord of the Rings, when it appears.

* Some details of a recent October 2024 talk at Stanford University in the USA, “Fighting the Long Defeat: Tolkien and Ancient Narratives of Decline”….

“Narratives of decline [from a Golden Age] are also at the core of Tolkien’s mythology, and this is just another, neglected aspect of classical influence on Tolkien. The talk will discuss the reception of narratives of decline in Tolkien’s legendarium, pointing out similarities, but also contrasts and differences [with classical models from antiquity]”

* A curious scholarly item listed for pre-order on Amazon UK, The 1879 Theft of Royal Ms 16 E VIII From the British Museum: Wars and Tolkien’s Teacher’s Role. Not Tolkien himself, but one of the young Tolkien’s teachers in Birmingham. The book reconstructs the theft and also the lost 13th century manuscript itself, which contained the only copy of the oldest French poem ‘Le Voyage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem et a Constantinople’.

* Doubtful Sea watches the excellent 1978 Charles Darwin mini-series, and is prompted to consider “Paleo-Tolkien” and his possible dino-debt to Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. The pterodactyls were quite well known to the late Victorians, the first complete scientific description being in 1891. Presumably this ‘flying dragon’ aroused a certain interest among the Edwardian public, and among boys in particular. It took various uncertain forms in book illustrations, museum postcards, etc, until our modern conception of the beast solidified in the 1950s.

* MindMatters proposes a new test for AI, alongside the well-know Turing Test, “The Tolkien Test”…

“The Tolkien test for AI is whether it can ‘create’ genuinely original work that bears no correspondence to anything a human has ever sub-created, as an extension of the original creation act and ultimate expression of originality.”

Well, yes, but that rather ignores the deep debt Tolkien had to all sorts of sources. His work has all sorts of “correspondence” to past works.

* And finally, The Folio Society Unveils £600 Edition of The Hobbit. I suspect Tolkien would have been happier to see £500 go to some good tree charity (restoring Britain’s lost Elm trees springs to mind), and for the remaining £100 to be spent on a clean second-hand Hobbit from eBay.

Tolkien Gleanings #245

* A new French book, Les Mondes de Christopher Tolkien (‘The Worlds of Christopher Tolkien’), due to be published 21st November 2024.

“This book contains testimonies from loved ones and studies on the man who not only edited thousands of pages of J.R.R. Tolkien, and mapped his universe, but who appears here as a writer and artist in his own right.”

* The artist Greg Hildebrandt has passed away. With his brother, he became one of the first major artists (‘The Brothers Hildebrandt’) to illustrate Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

* A new edition of the journal Mythlore (Fall/Winter 2024). Including ‘The Inconsistencies of Galadriel: The Influence of Earlier Legendarium in The Lord of the Rings’, among many other articles and reviews. Freely available online.

* The Troubadour reports on a recent J.R.R. Tolkien and the Oratorians discussion…

The Tolkien Society and Jesters of YHWH (JOY) household hosted a discussion about J.R.R. Tolkien and the Oratorians on Tuesday 8th October, focusing on Tolkien’s history, his encounter with the Oratory of Birmingham and his connection to St. Phillip Neri.

* Another delve into the deep topic of ‘Tolkien and War’, in the form of the University of Vermont’s 2025 Tolkien conference. This is their 21st annual conference, and will be both in person and online. The call-for-papers deadline is 2nd February 2025.

* A free webinar “From Myth to Manuscript: Exploring Inklings Archival Collections”. Booking now, for 13th November 2024.

* A new Bedlam Book Club podcast on Madness in the World of Tolkien, with Janet Croft. Discussing with reference to… “how Tolkien’s work intersects with his early life and experiences” during the First World War. Freely available online.

* New on YouTube, Prof. Paul Gondreau offers a 45-minute overview of “The Catholic Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings“.

* The feature-film Fellowship: Tolkien & Lewis appears to have been delayed and is now billed on its official site as “Coming Winter 2025”. It was, if I recall the UK filming and VFX-ing correctly, once billed as a Web series.

* Slipping into the U.S. public domain in January 2025, Joseph Gaer’s Burning Bush (1929). A thick collection of Jewish fairy-tales and “folklore legends” translated and adapted to English, published by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Gaer went on to become a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1930-35.

* Archive.org has restored user log-ins, following the hack. Scholars can also once again search across the full-text of all the scanned books and magazines. Uploading is still unavailable though, with the last upload being dated 9th October 2024.

* And finally, a new Treasure Hoard style plug-in, which guides Stable Diffusion 1.5 toward generating AI images of fantasy-style treasure-hoards. Just add dragons.

Tolkien Gleanings #244

* From Anna Smol, two new articles on Tolkien’s ‘The Homecoming’.

* A new Italian dissertation from Padua, Lo Hobbit: le origini del drago Smaug tra modello indoeuropeo e germanico (‘The origins of the dragon Smaug among the Indo-European and Germanic models’). “The study shows that Tolkien was clearly inspired by Indo-European and Germanic models to create Smaug.” No PDF download as yet, just a short abstract.

* New to me, an L.P. vinyl record of The Silmarillion Of Beren And Luthien (1977), read by Christopher Tolkien.

* At Signum University, a course on The Music of Middle-earth. Running into 2025, with a focus on the magnificent movie music of Howard Shore.

* In a May 2024 issue of the Glasgow student journal Mapping the Impossible: Journal for Fantasy Research, “Tolkien and Voice: Sound Descriptions in The Lord of the Rings“. Freely available online.

* A YouTube video from 2023, “The Promises to the Overcomer”. I probably missed it before because both the cryptic title and the blurb omitted any mention of what it was about. Turns out that the subtitle of the talk was actually “The Gifts and Rewards Given to the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings“.

* A new and sumptuous Daniel Crouch Rare Books Catalogue XXXIX: “I wisely started with a map…” – a celebration of fictional cartography (2024). Illustrated. £50 in paper, or download the PDF for free.

* Jordan M. Poss blogs on Tolkien and Buchan.

* In Oxford, a planning application has been submitted for the initial repair of the exterior of The Eagle & Child pub, one of the key Oxford pubs frequented by Tolkien and Lewis, ahead of a re-opening by the new owners.

* And finally, The Internet Archive is back online, partly. No new items after 9th October. No user log-ons or uploads. No ‘search inside’, just search of metadata. Still, it’s significantly faster than it used to be. Donations are welcomed, to help it stay online in the future.

Tolkien Gleanings #243

* New on YouTube, leading Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger on “70 Years of Reading Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* The Bodleian now has a Web page for the event Christopher Tolkien at 100: a celebration. Free and booking now.

* The latest issue of Journal of Tolkien Research is not a rolling one, but rather a fully-filled issue on “J.R.R. Tolkien and Medieval Poets” in honor of Richard C. West. As well as the articles there is also a two-page biography and an appreciation of West, plus a “Selected Bibliography of Publications by Richard C. West about J.R.R. Tolkien”. Freely available online.

* In case you missed it, the last article to be added to the previous rolling Journal of Tolkien Research was “Rimmo nin Bruinen dan in Ulaer!: Waters of Wisdom and Wonder in Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring”…

“Although environmental themes in Tolkien’s works have been widely researched, the specific role of water in Elven realms — and its possible Celtic cultural connotations — remains largely overlooked.”

* More previously-paywalled lectures on Tolkien by Rachel Fulton-Brown are now freely on YouTube or will be there shortly. Among these are A Taste for Tongues; Ichor and Potatoes; The Ent in the Moon; Through a Glass Darkly; and Magic Words.

* The 2025 C.S. Lewis Summer Institute now has speaker and artist details. The July conference in Northern Ireland is themed ‘Returning Home: C.S. Lewis, Roots, & Transformation’.

* The Case for Reading Tolkien at All Levels of Catholic Education is an event set for 4th January 2025, among sumptuous-looking surroundings in Pasadena, California. Speakers include Holly Ordway.

* And finally, Pipe Smokers Den snaps some relics of Lewis and Tolkien at Wheaton College, including Lewis’s tobacco pipe.

Tolkien Gleanings #242

* The long-awaited Tolkien on Chaucer, 1913-1959 book should have been released today, in hardcover and Kindle ebook.

* Now recorded and freely available on YouTube, Tolkien’s Collected Poems – Livestream chat with editors Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond.

* The European Conservative on “Worlds of Delight: The Poetry of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Being an appreciation of the wealth of Tolkien’s poetry, now newly available in the Collected Poems.

* The £25 paperback of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Utopianism and the Classics is due at the end of October 2024.

* The new German collection Marchen und Gesellschaft (‘Folk and fairy tale and society’) has an essay on “J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories”: what is a fairy tale good for anyway?”. A 16 page summary and commentary, in German.

* A new Journal of Inklings Studies: Vol. 14, No. 2 (October 2024) ($ paywall, free reviews). Reviews, among others, of Germanic Heroes, Courage, and Fate: Northern Narratives of Tolkien’s Legendarium; and Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring: To Rule the Fate of Many.

* New in English in the Serbian journal Interlitteraria “Fictionality in ‘Fog on the Barrow-downs’: Myth and Reference”. Despite the enticing title it turns out to be almost all academic-literary theory, rather than steeped in a deep understanding of British folklore, tales, landscape and weather. Freely available online.

* New and free on Fanac.org, scans of three 1970s issues of Mythprint.

* The Malvern Gazette local newspaper reports that “Tolkien expert’s talk cancelled after hurricanes destroys his home”…

“John Garth, who was due to speak at the Coach House Theatre on Sunday (13th October), is unable to attend after his family home in the southern USA was damaged by hurricanes Helene and Milton.”

I had no idea he had moved to the USA. Very sorry to hear of the calamity, and I hope that everyone is safe along with the copies of his scholarly work. I imagine this event may also affect his forthcoming Oxford University talk (24th October), “Quisling and Prisoner: How the Second World War shaped the treason of Isengard”?

* Joseph Loconte’s book The War for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933–1945 is now set for a June 2025 release.

* The Sentient Tree in Speculative Fiction is due to be published by Palgrave Macmillan just before Christmas 2024, as a £100 academic book. It’s a relatively short single-author book, and I’d guess it will have at least half a chapter on Tolkien.

* Difficult to find anything to link these days, among all the quickie cash-for-clicks clickbait that floods YouTube every day. But I guess I should mention this admittedly very-popular form occasionally (15,000-50,000 hits, compared to 5 or 6 hits for a Gleanings issue), and this week these two items look promising. The Lotus Eaters podcast discusses Tolkien the traditionalist in “Tolkien Hated Motorbikes and Loved Housewives”. While the Jess of the Shire podcast asks “Did Tolkien Hate…Everything?”…

“The Internet really loves to push the idea that J.R.R. Tolkien hated… well, everything. So, did he?”.

* And finally, Archive.org is still offline, after a serious hack. Once back, it will probably be a good idea to get the magnet links for your uploads, and host them on a blog page somewhere. If you’re still seeding the torrent, the file(s) should then remain available even if the Archive goes down again. Someone may also wish to do the same with all the vital free-access Tolkien research books and materials. It won’t be me.