A quick glance over the forthcoming Tolkien items, on the spring\/summer 2020 book lists and as known to Amazon UK:<\/p>\n
* A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien<\/em>, in the Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture series. It’s not clear what this is, but I suspect it may be the cheaper paperback edition of Blackwell’s earlier A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien<\/em> (2014), which had the same page length.<\/p>\n * Tolkien’s Cosmology: Divine Beings and Middle-Earth<\/em>, by Sam McBride, from Kent State University Press. Looks promising, though the blurb suggests that close-readers of The Silmarillion<\/em> will enjoy it the most. Tolkien is very<\/em> subtle in dropping hints that imply the existence of ‘structures of belief’ in the Shire, and I wonder if the book will pick up on such hints. (I don’t mean physical structures such as churches, as the term indicates ‘sets of structured ideas’).<\/p>\n * John Garth’s Tolkien’s Worlds: The Places That Inspired the Writer’s Imagination<\/em> appears to have been delayed again, and Amazon is now saying June 2020. I’d suspect that the virus may delay it even further.<\/p>\n