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Apparently I’m the first to get this news on the TS website, and it’s not all that brand-new: the news came to my eyes on March 12.

The long-needed collection by this title will be published in September, and is available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk. There’s a brief article about it in The Bookseller that’s informative but has one error: it’s not one volume, it’s three.

For the 240 or more poems (depending on how you count different versions – remember that you can count Errantry and Bilbo’s Lay of Eärendil as the same poem if you’re an extreme lumper in classification), including many never previously published at all, will be edited by the prolific and meticulous team of Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, and the set will include extensive commentary, a lengthy introduction, a chronology, and a glossary of the hard words. It should be over 1500 pages long.

Scull and Hammond have provided details in a blog post. The main additional takeaway from this is that this is a collected poems, not a complete poems. It will not include all of the poems from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, as surely anyone wanting this collection will already have those. As for the very long poems, such as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún and The Lays of Beleriand, those will be given in excerpts. Again, they’ve already been published elsewhere.

To this post I can add two additional pieces of information. First, to confirm, as the post suggests, that Tolkien’s never-published (except for a few quotations) verse translation of Beowulf will be among those long poems given in excerpts. It was never completed anyway, and the extracts should be extensive.

Second, I have been told that the set will be for sale from U.S. booksellers and not just in that country by order from the U.K., but there will not be a separate U.S. edition.

The compilation of an annual Tolkien studies bibliography often catches in my net listings for articles which, until I read the full article myself, I can’t tell if it has enough on Tolkien to be worth listing.

A 30-page biographical article on “Dickie” Reynolds – who was one of Tolkien’s masters at King Edward’s School in Birmingham and, much later, the friend for whom he wrote the “Sketch of the Mythology” that was the seed for all later versions of the Silmarillion – has less to say about his relationship with Tolkien than does the entry on Reynolds in Scull & Hammond’s Companion & Guide, so it’s not going in the bibliography. But it’s such an interesting portrait of Reynolds’ life that I want to write about it here.

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In a series of posts inspired by his reading of the new biography of Terry Pratchett – whose teenage fan letter to Tolkien was on display at the 2018 Bodleian exhibit – John D. Rateliff compares what he and Pratchett read next as a result of their reading Tolkien.

I had some similar experiences. (more…)


As we approach Christmas, some people are hunting around for a gift for a Tolkien fan. So, check out the list below of 10 suggestions which hopefully provide a range of ideas for every one. And, if you’re feeling the need for a pick-me-up, there’s always the option of picking up one of these for yourself! (more…)

On 2 September 2022 the landscape of Tolkien fandom, fantasy media and streaming services will fundamentally change with the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the most expensive TV series ever produced. Amazon have funded the endeavour which is the brainchild of J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, but so far the much of the online commentary is trapped either comparing the series (they haven’t seen) to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, or through the lens of the intentions and thoughts of the author. (more…)

Last week I was invited to London to get an exclusive glimpse at Amazon’s forthcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power which will première on Amazon Prime on Friday 2 September this year. (more…)