Tolkien Gleanings #327

* The latest edition of the UK’s History Today news-stand magazine (September 2025) has an opening print-only article on “This Middle Earth”…

“The article explores the historical and cultural significance of the term “middle earth,” tracing its origins from the Anglo-Saxon word middangeard, which referred to the human realm distinct from divine and monstrous realms. Initially associated with a cosmological understanding, the term evolved through medieval and early modern literature …”

* Details about what’s in the new French book Tolkien et la memoire de l’antiquite (‘Tolkien and the Memory of Antiquity’, published August 2025).

The first part appears to make a biographical survey of Tolkien’s schooling and training in relation to the Classics…

Chapter I. Antiquity in Tolkien’s literary and linguistic culture – A classic education – ancient readings and predilection for late antiquity – from ancient readings to literary creation – the taste of ancient languages ​​- from Latin to Quenya – ancient ludic etymologies.

Chapter II. Traces of ancient philosophy in the culture of Tolkien – an expensive investigation – a meeting of many ways – traces and testimonies in the work.

Chapter III. Antiquity in Tolkien’s historical vision – a broad vision of history – between Homer and classic historians: the basics of training – the medievalist and his historical sources – from knowledge to historical vision.

The second part appears to explore the “presence of the ancient world in the land” in the context of Middle-earth’s own antiquity. This includes a section intriguingly titled “Middle-earth as listening: limits, climates and landscapes”. Which is presumably on the sonic topography?

The third part appears to seek the usual classical sources in Orpheus, Plato (ring of Gyges), the Trojan wars, The Odyssey, mythic descents into the underworld, etc.

* New to me, a prize-winning undergraduate final dissertation from Brandeis University, “Invisible Enemy, Visible Harm: Unearthing Traces of the 1918 Flu Pandemic in Tolkien’s Middle-earth” (2020). Now freely available online.

* New at Pastor Theologians, “Twice-Told Tales: Tolkien’s Numenor, America, and the Church”.

* At Bandcamp Daily, a new long article and survey “Exploring the Mystical Realms of Fantasy Synth”, meaning ‘synthesizer-based electronic music’…

“The resurgence of dungeon synth over the past decade or so has been something to behold. From a sparse scene of solo creators toiling away in hermetic isolation to a global community of thriving [record] labels, sold-out festivals and international tours — truly, we are living in renaissance times. […] Survey the wider scene, though, and you’ll encounter dizzying variety [beyond the doomy gloominess of dungeon synth]. Think of a fantasy setting or a specific corner of mythology, and there’s almost certainly a one-person synth project out there taking its lore and turning it into music.”

* Some 50 years before The Clangers arrived on British TV, Tolkien was creating a wide range of strange flora and fauna on the Moon.

* And finally, in October 2025 the French are set to read a translation of Le Hobbit, illustre par Tove Jansson. Oddly listed on Amazon UK under “Paranormal & Urban”. But perhaps the publisher knows that’s where the young readers / moms are, those who are most likely to purchase?

Tolkien Gleanings #326

* The new August 2025 issue of the Brazilian open-access journal Abusoes is a special on ‘histories and theories of fantasy in the 21st century’, with one Tolkien essay. The back issues also offer various themed specials. Including on the Tales of Hoffmann, Brazilian fantasy 1980–2018, and a large issue dedicated to Lovecraft. All largely written in Portuguese.

* The Tea With Tolkien blog has a book set for 2026 release, Into the Heart of Middle-earth: Exploring Faith and Fellowship in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Pre-ordering now from Ave Maria Press.

* From the Brothers Grimm Society of North America, a forthcoming volume bringing together work from… “scholars who are working on nineteenth-century women fairy-tale writers, collectors, and storytellers across Europe”. “Nineteenth-century” here covers 1789-1914.

* The journal Messengers from the Stars plans a 2026 special issue on cityscapes in fantasy & science fiction. Tolkien’s Numenor is mentioned in the blurb. Deadline: 1st September 2025.

* An unofficial comic-book version of Tolkien’s unpublished epilogue for The Lord of the Rings. Freely available online.

* And finally, a new folk-metal album evoking Middle-earth, from Germany, with the bombastic lead-track celebrating “Sam the Brave”. This track now has an animated official video on YouTube.

Tolkien Gleanings #325

* From the Philology degree of a Moscow University, the new undergraduate dissertation “Real and Fictional Geography in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Minor Works” (2025). Not online, but there is an abstract in English…

“The second chapter explores the connections between real geography and fictional geography, which also shows the importance of researching the writer’s geography, since the results of the analysis lead to new and more complete interpretations of the text.”

* Whatever one may think of the various screen and videogame adaptations of Tolkien, one can’t fault the musicians and concept designers/illustrators who worked on them. From an Irish undergraduate degree in Design for Film (Production), a new dissertation looks at the latter in “Architects of Arda: The Design of the Elvish Realms in The Rings of Power” (2025). Has no copyright-censorship of the images, thankfully. Freely available online, and one can also find more dissertations of a similar nature from recent years.

* From Stockholm University in Sweden, the new undergraduate dissertation
“The Lord of the Rings: The Verisimilitude and Immersive Depth of Tolkien’s Middle-earth” (2025). Not online, but with an English abstract.

* The latest July 2025 issue of the open-access SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature reviews Supernatural Speakers in Old English Verse (2023), a book on…

“supernatural speech and speakers in Old English poetry. Coker’s monograph will be of huge interest to the field, not only for its extended treatment of an enthralling theme but for the remarkable insights that it generates along the way.”

* New from Cambridge University Press, what appears to be an introductory book in their Cambridge Elements series, Natural and Supernatural in Early Medieval England (2025). Apparently only 78 pages long despite its price, so… perhaps more of a pocket-book for students with deep pockets?

* I hear that the new book Fantasy: A Short History (April 2025), has a long chapter “on Tolkien and Wagner”. The book was issued in the Bloomsbury ‘Short Histories’ series, yet apparently it is neither short (“296 pages” says Amazon) nor a popular read (“this is Adam Roberts in professorial mode. He doesn’t make it too easy for the reader” says one reviewer). As such, Gleanings readers may be more interested in the Tolkien chapter than otherwise.

* And finally, I spotted another ‘unknown quantity’ new book and this one had a discouraging AI-quickie cover image. But the size of this just-released book, A Culinary Journey Through Middle-earth: A Fantasy-Inspired Cookbook of Hobbit Meals, Elvish Delights & Dwarvish Feasts, intrigued me. 311 pages just for some recipes? Surely there must be more to it? So I had the ‘free sample’ Amazon supplies for Kindle ebooks, and it does appear to be a legitimate book from a LoTR-loving foodie who evidently also knows how to write. The sample offers short mini-essays on the different approaches to food among the different races of Middle-earth. Worth a look, it seems, if food/cooking is your thing. Though I can’t vouch for the final edibility on the plate!

Tolkien Gleanings #324

* The latest Christianity & Literature journal reviews the book Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology ($ partial paywall, ‘first page free’).

* An online course, “Reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings with Professor Michael D.C. Drout”, August-November 2025. It started a week ago, but it’s also $400… so I’m guessing you might get a seat if you nip in quickly and wildly wave the cash?

* Now freely available online, Good Thoughts on Folklore and Mythology, Vol. 1: Folklore and Vol. 2: Mythology. Together, these new books offer a huge “Festschrift in Honour of Terry Gunnell”, Professor of Folkloristics at the University of Iceland. Vol. 1 includes “Why Folklorists Should Read Saints’ Lives” and Vol. 2 includes “A Dragon Is No Idle Fancy: Loki’s Spawn and Thor’s Bane”, among many others.

* Forthcoming before Christmas, Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings. Being a short help-book for Christians during Lent, presenting snippets drawn from the writings of the Inklings and their wider circles.

* An Italian podcast series is reading Tolkien’s letters in order, and doing so in Italian translation. Congratulations to the maker, as the podcast has now reached Lettere 40. Freely available online.

* Here in the UK, Stonyhurst College offers public days dedicated to “The Shire, Sherlock & Shakespeare at Stonyhurst”, with small exhibitions and in-person guided tours. Set for 22nd–23rd August 2025.

* And finally, a new map of Beleriand from the First Age, made by Starcave on DeviantArt. There’s a free printable version without watermark. Also a version without the labels.

Tolkien Gleanings #323

* “Tolkien, editor, reader and critic of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (2025). An advanced student work, it seems, but one checked over by Leo Carruthers of the Sorbonne. Freely available online.

* The Tolkien Society blog has “New edition of The Hobbit graphic novel coming this September”, with inner-page previews and the additional detail that the maker… “is speaking at the Society’s Oxonmoot event in September 2025. His talk will be available to both those in Oxford and those joining the event online.”

* Now on YouTube, a recording of the recent Signum University thesis defence for the PhD on “Neutral and Evil Technology in Lewis and Tolkien”.

* Also new on YouTube, a video tour Inside the C.S. Lewis and Tolkien Museum at Wheaton College in the USA.

* From the journal Religion & Literature and now in open-access at a repository, “The eschatological imagination in literature” (2025).

* At RealClear Books & Culture, the new article “C.S. Lewis in the Age of Bleakness: Awe, Wonder and the Power of Enchantment”.

* Massively Overpowered considers Lord of the Rings Online’s unreleased soundtrack, and embeds the YouTube fan-videos that showcase some of it. Just part, apparently, of…

“a huge repository of “unreleased” music for the game that either hasn’t gotten a formal release anywhere or hasn’t been used in the game yet.”

* And finally, a new 12-mile Middle Earth GIS Hexmap, meaning that each hex is 12 miles. Such things are used by tabletop gamers, if they have a big enough table or three. A high-res version is also freely available.

“I tried to only depict features appearing in Tolkien’s writings, for which I relied primarily on citations on Tolkeingateway.net. I have not (intentionally) included anything from the films, TV show, [multiplayer online videogames], or various [tabletop] RPGs.”

Tolkien Gleanings #322

* Newly listed on Amazon, J.R.R. Tolkien and G.B. Smith: With Wind in our Ears. A book from Palgrave Macmillan, set for release on 9th November 2025.

“The volume explores this relationship from biographical, literary, and philosophical perspectives, focusing on the content and style of Smith’s poetry, Tolkien’s editorial work, their shared intellectual world, and the lasting influence of Smith on Tolkien’s imagination.”

* Somehow escaping notice in Gleanings until now, I find that the new Smith of Wootton Major affordable 224-page paperback edition (March 2025) includes… “a facsimile of the illustrated first edition, a manuscript of Tolkien’s early draft of the story, notes and an alternate ending, and a lengthy essay on the nature of Faery.” This latter essay being, according to a review… “a condensed and more focused presentation of the ideas Tolkien explores in ‘On Fairy Stories’, benefiting from decades of continued thought after that essay was written, revised, revised again, and published.”

* Book trade bean-counter BookScan reports J.R.R. Tolkien’s 2024 book sales via British bookshops at £4.2m ($5.12m). This figure presumably relates to his own works (rather than scholarship etc) and sits within £82m of bookshop sales for science fiction and fantasy books in 2024. Bear in mind that BookScan is apparently only looking at point-of-sale retail data for new print books.

* Concatenation reviews The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition, with a focus on the development and afterlife of LoTR. The review is freely available online.

* From a Polish Tolkien site, a “Previously unknown letter by Tolkien’s son Michael on his ancestors”. Presumably Michael here conveys the family lore as his father also knew it…

“I will now present a [April 1963] letter from Michael H.R. Tolkien to Charles Woodrow Tolkien from California and his children. Following the letter, which presents the legendary history of the Tolkien family (almost 100 percent untrue), I will briefly reconstruct the family’s history based on documents from archives in Berlin, Gdansk, and London.”

Tolkien Gleanings #321

* Cardinal Vices in Middle-earth (2025, forthcoming). A monograph as a chunky book, being also Studies in Linguistics, Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Volume 43 (Peter Lang)…

“a complex comparative analysis of the role of the seven cardinal vices and their opposing virtues as recognised by the Catholic Church” [as found in the vices and virtues of Tolkien’s Middle-earth]

* Red Quills on “What Tolkien Teaches Us About Mapmaking”. One might add “Write the labels more neatly” to the list. Which is what the publisher requested when asking for re-drawn maps for use in The Hobbit.

* Joshse discusses “Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield”. His long commentary after having reading the book…

Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield, was beloved by Tolkien and Lewis. […] C.S. Lewis wrote to Barfield about the influence he had on Tolkien’s philosophy:

“You might like to know that when Tolkien dined with me the other night he said, apropos of something quite different, that your conception of the ancient semantic unity had modified his whole outlook.”

In Poetic Diction, Barfield puts forth the argument that over time language becomes less poetic because, as rational beings, we cannot help but separate all of the different meanings out of rich older words to increase their specificity.

* New from Spain, the PhD “Dishonoured Sun: adaptation, transmission and reception of Sir Gawain in Medieval Europe from 12th to 15th century” (2025). Sadly not yet online, but there is an abstract.

* Also on Gawain and survivals, in a recent paper I noted mention of some recent dialect work… “In a previous study (Markus 2021: 124–135), I investigated the dialectal survival of the specific lexis in the works of the Gawain poet.” This reference can be tracked specifically to Chapter 8.3, “Test Cases for Scholarly Work with EDD Online”, in English Dialect Dictionary Online: A New Departure in English Dialectology (2021, $ paywalled). This ten-page investigation into Gawain is otherwise unheralded by the blurb or contents-list.

* New from Villanova University, the Masters dissertation “”Warm Life, As Now It Coldly Stands”: Figuring Longing, Loss, and Memory Through the Mnemonics of Fantastical Art”. Part three is “”All the land is empty and forgetful”: Memories of Middle-earth”. Partly free online.

* And finally, The Bodleian Library blog has a new post on “The History of the English Faculty Library (1914-2025)” which has some details of the place as the young Tolkien might have known it…

The English Faculty Library was founded in 1914 by an endowment from the English Fund, largely set up by Joseph Wright. It was established in Acland House, 40 Broad Street (part of the land where the Weston Library now stands). […] This was a labyrinthine conglomeration of multiple 17th-century homes which had been renovated and added to over the centuries. Pantin notes that, in the 19th century, two libraries had been added to the property. [… At 1914 the new Library] owned 342 books, many gifted by delegates of the Clarendon Press or Joseph Wright. It had a budget of up to £25 per year. Percy Simpson was appointed as Librarian on a part-time basis. By 1915, the EFL owned 800 books. In 1916, Wright organised an appeal to buy A.S. Napier’s library upon his death for the EFL. This contribution and others meant that by 1917, the EFL owned 4,250 books.

Tolkien Gleanings #320

* The Tolkien Conference Switzerland, set for March 2026, now has a speakers list and abstracts. Topics include…

   – Tolkien’s depiction of the tools of leadership and command.
   – Leadership and lament in the person of Gandalf.
   – Tolkien as an officer in the Great War.
   – Types of governance in Middle-earth.

* A new long post from Oronzo Cilli on “British Communists: Michael H.R. Tolkien’s letters to the Evening Despatch (1944) and the Catholic Herald (1948)”. This reveals a new discovery, some of Tolkien’s son’s published anti-communist letters to publications. This then leads Cilli to an appendix in which he very plausibly asks if it may have been Michael Tolkien who subscribed to A.K. Chesterton’s ultra right-wing magazine Candour (1953-1973, League of Empire Loyalists), rather than his father. A 24-volume set of Candour allegedly “owned by Tolkien” was sold out of the Tolkien estate in 1973 on the senior Tolkien’s death, or so the current owner of the set would have it. The original ownership then seems fairly easy to prove or disprove: i) do we have the auction catalogue of the senior Tolkien’s house clearance from 1973; ii) are the alleged ‘red biro annotations’ in the set actually made in Tolkien’s very distinctive hand; and iii) does the set have any slips or envelopes relating to the subscription? Subscriber address-lists are not in the Candour papers and archives, now held at the University of Bath, but Bath does have a folder of 1965 letter(s?) from “TOLKIEN, Michael H. R.” to Chesterton. Which I guess may also have remarks which reveal his status as a subscriber or not.

* Sonja Virta is in the early stages of a PhD on… “revisions made to Finnish Tolkien translations after their original publication”.

* A Signum University online thesis defence, of a thesis on “Neutral and Evil Technology in Lewis and Tolkien”… “This thesis challenges the reductionistic narrative that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were anti-technology and anti-science.” Set for 13th August 2025.

* New in the current rolling issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research, “Romanticism in Tolkien’s The Hobbit”. Considers Tolkien’s uses of nature and domesticity, and suggests these themes parallel the concerns of the Romantic movement.

* The summer 2025 issue of the British Fantasy Society’s BFS Journal is a special on ‘Nature in Fantasy’. No Tolkien.

* And finally, the return of Birmingham Middle-earth Festival in September 2025 appears to have been cancelled. The website says…

“Unfortunately, we have had to cancel this year’s event, everything was all set up, but something has come up, and we sadly decided to cancel. Very sorry to all.”

And this is confirmed on their Facebook page.

Tolkien Gleanings #319

* The latest edition of the journal Translation Review reviews Reading Tolkien in Chinese: Religion, Fantasy, and Translation (2024) ($ paywall).

* Oronzo Cilli’s new article on “Tolkien, Trains, and Two Discoveries: Meccano and Hornby”. Hornby here refers to the famous brand of British model-railway trains, and their associated track layouts running through home-made miniature landscapes of lovingly crafted chicken-wire, papier-mache and pipe-cleaner trees. There was nothing unusual about this at the time, since ‘model railroading’ (as Americans may know it) was once a hugely popular male hobby in Britain. Even today, the hobby still sustains a regular glossy news-stand magazine.

* Dimitra Fimi on “Tolkien, Landscape Archaeology, and the First Age of Middle-earth”, specifically the great landscape monuments that endured into the Third Age.

* New in the journal The Literary Scientist “What Did She Know About Transformation That We Don’t?” (2025). Freely available online.

“An old woman lingers in Sir Bertilak’s castle, silent and unnoticed. Only at the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is her name revealed […] Far from a mere enchantress, her manipulation of life forms, elemental forces, and bodily change aligns with alchemy’s quest for transmutation, renewal […] In medieval thought, metals were purified into gold through trial, just as Bertilak becomes a vessel of endurance and near-immortality to test Gawain’s virtue. The Green Knight’s seasonal return and survival of decapitation embody alchemical ideals of regeneration and the Elixir of Life.”

* From the University of Birmingham, “‘Stille as the stone, or a stubbe other’: Mineral and Energy Imaginaries in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (2025). To appear in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, but already freely available online in Open Access.

“Situating the poem within the context of its geographical allusions to (in sequence [of travel]) regions of coal, lead, and wood/charcoal, it argues that these are components not simply of the poet’s worldbuilding but the text’s narrative logic. It locates Sir Gawain and the Green Knight within the Galfridian tradition – derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth […] engaged with the island’s terranean and subterranean riches.”

A useful focus on gold, silver, lead and charcoal. Though the author regrettably assumes Gawain ceases his journey in the Wirral, and that Hautdesert and its precisely-described topography is somehow a purely imaginary place. Yet the text itself clearly tells us he goes through the Wirral and carries on into very different and obviously real-world upland terrain — which incidentally had medieval lead mining at the time of the authorship of Gawain. re: coal the author might also wish to know that in 1257 Queen Eleanor had protested that Nottingham was too smoky and sulphurous due to sea-coal burning, and therefore uninhabitable for her and her court. Eleanor decamped for the cleaner air at Tutbury Castle in East Staffordshire. Sea-coal was being mined near Tunstall (North Staffordshire) from 1282 onwards, along a ridge only a few miles south of Sir Gawain’s likely route.

* In Italy at the end of August 2025, a two-day Tolkien Music Festival.

* The Narnia Fans website has an interview with the maker of the new book Painting Wonder: How Pauline Baynes Illustrated the Worlds of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (2025).

Tolkien Gleanings #318

* A new Prancing Pony podcast has a long interview with illustrator Ted Nasmith on YouTube. Apparently this is… “his first full-length interview”.

* Next year’s issue (summer 2026) of Forgotten Ground Regained: A Quarterly Journal of Alliterative Verse is to be a Tolkien special, apparently set to feature alliterative verse set in Middle-earth. The Journal appears to be free online, and has articles as well as poetry.

* I came across a 2013 auction page for a Tolkien letter of June 1957, on the speaking aloud (or not) of Sir Gawain and the lost rules of alliterative verse. Fascinating stuff. Surprisingly it’s not in the latest edition of the letters, judging by several searches for distinctive phrases and a look at the relevant 1957 dates…

“In dealing with a dead metrical practice, that has not left a record or tradition of ‘the rules,’ I think that most enquiries, and notably those dealing with the ‘alliterative’ tradition, become confused. They seem to me, to make an allegory, like the work of man attempting to analyse the callisthenics and physical rhythms of two tennis-players, including the differences between them, without bothering to enquire what is the function of the artificial white lines on the grass, or observing the wholly preposterous net. They may, or may not, succeed in saying something interesting about the motions of a man hitting a bouncing object with a racket, or about bodily motions in general, but they will say very little about lawn-tennis, in which human physique and artificial rules are in constant interaction.”

* Miriam Ellis considers the likely architectural and gardening dynamics of “The High Garden and Architecture of Tolkien’s Rivendell”.

* The Fintry Trust is set to host a talk on “Tolkien and the Autumnal Equinox”. Which is 22nd September in 2025, and the same date as Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday.

* At the Virginia Military Institute, the campus news service offers an article on “Ongoing Researches Into Tolkien’s Contribution to Biblical Translation”. Specifically, the Book of Jonah…

“Adams plans to present his paper at the VMI Undergraduate Research Symposium during spring [2026] semester, and hopes to get it published in one of several possible academic journals”

The undergraduate is reportedly puzzled as to why Tolkien chose Jonah. Possibly because the Gawain-poet tackled Jonah in his Patience, and for the connections with the German earendel cognate Orendel.

* Can a ‘zine obtain some recognition from the academic system? Perhaps not such a problem in a more fannish world, where fans and scholars and academics all productively mingle. But in more elitist forms of academia, it’s not so easy. Outside the Lines details her attempts at “Publishing a Zine Through Scholarly Channels”, and the details and her routes may be useful for some readers of Gleanings.

* And finally, “Paws on Parchment – New Exhibition Highlights Cats in Medieval Manuscripts”. ‘Paws on Parchment’ is an exhibition open now at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, running there until 22nd February 2026. Part of a series of themed animal exhibitions, ‘Paws’ is to be accompanied by ‘Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt’ opening on 27th September 2025 at the same venue.

Tolkien Gleanings #317

* A substantial-looking scholarly slate of speakers, set to give talks at the Tolkien Fest 2025 in Malta. The page has details of the talks, and the dates are 22nd-24th August 2025.

* This week Word on Fire taps into Tolkien to find “Hope for the Humanities” in academia.

* Signum University now has listings for its September and October 2025 online short-courses. Including: The Poetic Corpus of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Later Poems 1 (Volume 3: 1931-1967); Creative Quenya Translation; Exploring Tolkien’s “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”; and The Poetry of The Lord of the Rings (Book I), among others.

* New on YouTube from the East Yorkshire tourist-board, “Walking in Tolkien’s footsteps: East Yorkshire’s latest tribute”. Three minutes and well-edited.

* New on CivitAI, a free plugin (LoRA) which guides the SDXL local AI image-generator towards a particular style. The Manuscript Drolleries LoRA allows you to make images from text prompts aimed at generating… “grotesques, drolleries, marginalia and doodles [as if] from illuminated manuscripts”. Note however that CivitAI, the main AI creative models hub, is now effectively banned in the UK. Brits can still reach it if we have a VPN but, given the size of the downloads involved in AI (7Gb is usual for a single SDXL model), a VPN is not ideal. Sadly, very few models or LoRAs are put on torrents.

* And finally, that rare edition of The Hobbit which was discovered near Bristol, as mentioned in a previous Gleanings? It has been sold for £43,000. Which is around $57,000 U.S.

Tolkien Gleanings #316

* The latest rolling Journal of Tolkien Research is nicely “filling up the corners”, and the latest toothsome item is a peer-reviewed article on “The Matter of Time in the Faerie Realms of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings”, with specific focus on the Celtic otherworld and… “the complex interplay of time found in Celtic mythology”. Freely available online.

* A Signum University thesis defence is set for 6th August 2025, online on Zoom, titled “A Myth for Mankind: The Lord of the Rings, Modernism, and The Counterculture”. In the thesis … “special attention is given to the novel’s adoption by the American counterculture of the 1960s and 70s”.

* Kalimac’s Corner offers a short Mythcon report…

I got to the Tolkien trivia contest [… and there I was the only contestant who] knew that before Tolkien read chunks of The Lord of the Rings into a friend’s tape recorder, what he first recited was the Lord’s Prayer. To exorcise the machine, he said. And, being Tolkien, he recited it in Gothic.

* Mythopoeic Awards winners announced, for books published in 2024. In the ‘Inklings Studies’ category, the winner is The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien (2024).

* From the Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century (2022), “Fantastic Letters: Writing in a Fictional World”. Discusses Tolkien’s fictional lettering, alongside other key examples. Freely available online.

* The Mythmakers is being translated into Dutch, as The Mythmakers: De wonderlijke vriendschap tussen C.S. Lewis en J.R.R. Tolkien. Set for release on 30th October 2025.

* The Poles are set to enjoy what sounds like a new Polish translation of Tolkien. The title translates as Unfinished stories of Middle-earth and Numenor. The 600-page hardcover is due to thump heavily onto doormats on 12th August 2025, according to Amazon UK.

* A nice new discovery on DeviantArt, Gnome-the-artist, from the Czech Republic. Lots of quality Tolkien artworks, including imaginative portraits of Tolkien himself. Available without watermarks and (for those signed-up to DA) with downloads available at large sizes.

* And finally, The Tolkien Society calls for Tolkien to feature on a new Bank of England bank note. I’m guessing that the shortlist is drawn up a couple of years in advance, and thus the Society is anticipating that a Reform government will be quite amenable to the idea circa 2026/27? Personally I’d change the rather depressive choice of words, though. Perhaps more suitable would be “The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began…”