{"id":18616,"date":"2025-11-25T19:35:43","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/?p=18616"},"modified":"2025-11-25T19:37:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:37:38","slug":"tolkien-gleanings-362","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2025\/11\/25\/tolkien-gleanings-362\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Gleanings #362"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tolkien Gleanings<\/a> #362<\/p>\n

* Newly published, the book Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings<\/a><\/em>. One of the book’s creators is Malcolm Guite, former Chaplain at and now Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. The book is a multi-author Inklings “devotional” which aims to help Christians… “to rediscover Lent through the lens of imagination-infused faith”. Lent is the term used for the 40 days of Christian repentance prior to Easter — usually expressed through fasting, prayer, humility and sacrifice — and apparently meant to be a personal echo of Christ’s ’40 days in the wilderness’.<\/p>\n

* The Reading Tolkien<\/em> podcast talks with Michael Drout<\/a> about his book The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation<\/em>, due for release on 2nd December 2025. I see that The Prancing Pony Podcast<\/em> also has an interview with Drout<\/a>. For both links the .MP3 downloads are hidden under the “… More” button.<\/p>\n

* In French, the new 800-page book Une lecture du Hobbit et du Seigneur des Anneaux de Tolkien. L’arborescence du cercle<\/a><\/em> (November 2025) (‘A reading of Tolkien’s The Hobbit<\/em> and Lord of the Rings<\/em>: The Circle and the Tree’).<\/p>\n

* The Tolkien Society’s latest book Numenor, The Mighty and Frail: Proceedings of The Tolkien Society Seminar 2023<\/a><\/em> (November 2025) has now been published. Among others, contents include…<\/p>\n

   – Dealing with the Dead: Nuances of ancient Egypt and medieval theology in Numenor.
\n   – Ecology of Imperialism: Environmental History for Numenor.
\n   – “By the Waters of Anduin We Lay Down and Wept”: Exilic Theology in the \u2018Akallabeth\u2019.<\/p>\n

* Newly posted online, the Spanish Tolkien Society this week offers a long interview in Spanish with John Garth<\/a>, which originally appeared in their journal Estel<\/em> No. 88 (2018). Back in September I see they also had a long blog post in Spanish celebrating 100 issues of Estel<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

* The student article “The Great Wizarding Duel: Tolkien’s Possible Influence on Rowling”, in the new 2025 edition of the University of South Carolina’s annual open-access The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

* Now 99.8% uploaded and for sale, the picture library of the venerable magazine Country Life<\/em><\/a>, from the magazine’s inception through to today. It’s something of a pain to filter and navigate the collection, and the lack of dating of images is very regrettable. Nor can individual images be linked in a blog via a simple URL link. Tagging is sometimes subject to glitches (e.g. searching for illustrator<\/em>, seeking portraits of illustrators such as Quentin Blake or Ronald Searle, only gets endless illustrations<\/em>). Overall, the site is far from ideal for the user. But… the determined Tolkienist may unearth a gem, especially among the many old b&w images of Oxford and Oxfordshire. Judging by my tests a high-res image licence for personal use appear to be \u00a375, and one can also get licences for public display or publication. The state of AI colourisation of b&w is such that your chosen image could easily be nicely colourised. <\/p>\n

* Full auctioneer details, with good photos, of the alleged Tolkien items due for sale in the forthcoming “Precious Things” auction<\/a> in Bath. As with all auctions, ‘buyer beware’. Update: Auction now “postponed”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

* And finally, leading auctioneer Christies now has a page for the forthcoming item “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Merton College Desk, Late 19th Century”<\/a>, and offers seven high-res pictures of the desk.<\/p>\n

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Tolkien Gleanings #362 * Newly published, the book Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings. One of the book’s creators is Malcolm Guite, former Chaplain at and now Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. The book is a multi-author Inklings “devotional” which aims to help Christians… “to rediscover Lent through the lens of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18616"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18619,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18616\/revisions\/18619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}