Musings on Tolkien and modern fantasy literature.
In the Spring 2026 issue of Mythlore, I reviewed the book Icons of the Fantastic: Illustrations of Imaginative Literature from the Korshak Collection (2025), edited by Amanda T. Zehnder and David M. Brinley. The review is available freely online here. The new Summer 2026 issue of The University of Chicago Magazine has a profile of the Korshak alums, father and son, who put together the
I've just posted a new piece at Tolkien Oddments substack. Here is the beginning. You can read the entire piece freely at this link.More on MadlenerLast summer, I published a piece in The Journal of Tolkien Research on “Josef Madlener’s ‘Der Berggiest’: Not the Origin of Gandalf.” It is freely available here. My point basically was that it was chronologically impossible for a postcard
Okay, I'm experimenting. My post on "Books Dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien During His Lifetime" is freely available at my (new) Tolkien Oddments substack I think you can link to it here. For now I have about five ideas for occasional Oddments posts, which should give me enough time to decide whether its a useful venue or whether I like blogging better. I'm not giving up on blogging.
A. Merritt (1877-1943)For anyone interested in the life and works of A. Merritt, the book A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool (1985), edited by Sam Moskowitz, is an extremely frustrating resource.* It is a hodge-podge of stray writings by Merritt (poems, stories, interviews, fragments) or about Merritt (poems in praise of Merritt, and fanzine articles on him), with interspersed and often
My dragon award from the Tolkien Society, announced here (with other winners) at the end of April, arrived a few weeks ago. It looks splendid. Thanks to all involved in the selection and administration, and congratulations to all the other winners.Subsequently I was asked to give a talk at Oxonmoot (September 4th-7th), and I agreed to do so. It will be via Zoom, and my topic is "Humphrey
In July 1964, L. Sprague de Camp sent J.R.R. Tolkien a copy of his anthology, Swords & Sorcery, which had been published in December 1963. It is a collection of eight stories, with an introduction by de Camp, and colored cover art and eight interior black and white illustrations by Virgil Finlay. Tolkien already knew the art of Virgil Finlay because his American publisher, Houghton
So far as I know, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian author of such magisterial fantasy stories as "The Aleph" and "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," mentioned Tolkien only twice--and not favorably. I wondered why, for it would have seemed, knowing Borges's other interests (from Anglo-Saxon to Lewis Carroll--Borges was especially well-read in British literature), that he might have been a fan.
Recently I finished a checklist of the writings of Richard Adams (1920-2016), the author of Watership Down and many other books. My checklist accounts for the first editions of his books, short stories, juvenilia, nonfiction, and a selection of interviews with him. I was surprised no one had done such a thing before. It will appear in a volume Watership Down
I just learned that the painter, illustrator and writer known as Ul de Rico (his full name was Ulderico Conte Gropplero di Troppenburg) passed away on 3 August 2023, a bit over a year ago, aged 79. I've written about him before, and here is the link. The Rainbow Goblins has been a favorite of mine since I first discovered it not long after U.S. publication in 1978. His family's announcement
In The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), there is about eight pages worth of text comprising "Drafts for a letter to 'Mr Rang'" (Letter no. 297, pp. 379-387). I never knew there was any mystery about the identity of Mr. Rang until my friend Jessica Yates just sent me a draft of her short piece on this topic (now published here). My research of some ten years ago identified a different person.
So I started watching the Apple tv series The Changeling, based on the Victor Lavelle novel, and at the very beginning there is shown a shelf of books in a library in Queens. I always cue in to the titles of books when they show up as props in a film or in a series. So imagine my surprise to see one of my own books, Tales Before Tolkien, in this shot from The Changeling.Click on the photo
In May 2024, a scrap of paper Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
The fact that Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, was one of the first reviewers of The Silmarillion on its publication in 1977, seems to have long escaped Tolkienists, and Tolkien bibliographers. The review is not cited in Richard C. West's impressive Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist (revised edition 1981), nor in Judith A. Johnson's J.R.R. Tolkien: Six Decades of Criticism (1986),
The 1964 & 1973 Knopf dwThe recent hullabaloo over posthumously revising classic texts to conform to contemporary ideologies reminded me that I have long wanted to look into the changes Roald Dahl himself made in 1973 to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Here are the results of my study. [A companion piece on the first edition points of the Knopf edition can be found here.] Charlie and
I just googled to see if my old friend Richard Mathews was still the Director of the University of Tampa Press, only to find out that he died last month. I met him at the 1987 Mythcon in Milwaukee, where we both appeared on a panel on David Lindsay. We found we had many common interests. Richard had published, with Borgo Press, a short book on Tolkien, Lightning from a Clear Sky (1978), and other
Oscar Wilde by MaxThe New York Public Library recently hosted an exhibition on Max Beerbohm: The Price of Celebrity from October 20, 2023--January 28, 2024. A small book (around one hundred pages), with text by Margaret D. Stetz, with Mark Samuels Lasner, describes many of the items showcased in the exhibition. Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) is perhaps best remembered as a caricaturist (he
In Tolkien On Fairy-Stories (2008), Verlyn Flieger and I noted that in Tolkien's research notes for his famous lecture/essay, Tolkien queried himself twice about whether on not Andrew Lang had included a retold Beowulf in any of his Fairy Books--the first time briefly, but in the second instance with a bit of commentary: A Fairy Story. But when retold (seldom) it is not retold as such. For
When I made my previous post, I did not know that Chris Riddell had earlier illustrated Tolkien in a similar anthology of illustrated extracts. Thanks to Trotter for pointing this volume out to me. And the earlier book turns out to be a far more interesting book than the one I had known about, for a number of reasons. The Puffin Treasury of Children's Stories was published in 1996. No editor
The Puffin Twentieth-Century Collection of Stories (1999), edited by Judith Elkin, is a collections of extracts from 23 children's books, each extract illustrated by a different artist, in varying modes. The Tolkien extract is from the Troll chapter of The Hobbit, and its illustrations are by Chris Riddell. The full-page illustration is towards the end of the extract, and depicts Gandalf.&
Michael Hague illustrated the 1984 edition of The Hobbit, but that wasn't the only time he illustrated scenes from The Hobbit. Also in 1984, the Easton Press published a special edition of The Hobbit with a frontispiece by Hague that is not included in any other edition of the book. I show the title page and frontispiece here: Click to enlargeOne aspect of this illustration is
So David Bratman of Tolkien Studies just posted here that Verlyn Flieger is retiring from the journal after 22 years. I wondered: has it really been that long since Mike Drout and I first discussed the idea, and asked Verlyn to join us in founding the journal? Yes, it has indeed been 22 years. I dug into my old emails with Mike. Here is the seed of the whole operation.I emailed Mike
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
Recently, David Haden, at his Lovecraftian blog Tentaclii, noted that an old and rare children's fantasy is now available in pdf-form for the first time (link accessible here). This is a curious short novella The Walking Trees: A Story for Children by Irish writer Rosa Mulholland (1841-1921). It is comprised of ten chapters, and originally appeared in three issues in volume 4 (1876) of The Irish
Charles in 1987My friend Charles Noad was found dead on Thursday of last week. I met him at a meeting of the Northfarthing Smial (of the Tolkien Society) in London, on the 2nd of July 1978, so our friendship goes back a full forty-five years. He befriended many Tolkienists, and kept extensive accounts with some of us Americans, as he supplied us with UK books, and we supplied him with US ones. He