Trotter wrote:

The original watercolour was painted on the 8th July 1913 at Bilberry Hill - The picture is "King's Norton from Bilberry Hill" pg 21 Artist & Illustrator by Hammond & Scull

The Bovadium Fragments reflects Tolkien’s mastery of Latin. Bovadium was the Latinised name for the village of Oxford, and the Daemon of Vaccipratum translates as “the demon of the cow pasture”, or Cowley – where Morris had established his motor manufacturing plant.

In one passage of the unearthed story, Tolkien writes: “But it came to pass that a Daemon (as popular opinion supposed) in his secret workshops devised certain abominable machines, to which he gave the name Motores.”

The Bovadium Fragments was among Tolkien manuscripts either donated or deposited posthumously by his estate to Oxford’s Bodleian Library. It will be published in October by Harper Collins.

Chris Smith, the Harper Collins publishing director, described it as “a sharply satirical account of the perils of allowing car production and machine-worship to take over your town, where things ultimately all go to hell, in a very literal sense”.

Tolkien’s son and literary executor, Christopher, had edited the text before his death in 2020.

The book will include an essay by Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s librarian, who has conducted extensive research into the planning controversy, having established its inspiration for Tolkien’s story.

Mr Ovenden said it is about a scholar in the future looking at evidence of a society that is now lost, having “worshipped the motor car”, adding: “Tolkien was deeply affected by the way that the motor industry was changing his city, and that shines through.”

Asked why The Bovadium Fragments had not been published before, Mr Ovenden said: “Christopher’s priority in publishing his father’s unpublished works was on the Middle Earth-related material. This material didn’t really fit with that or with his father’s more scholarly pieces, and so it got left.

“I would visit Christopher and his wife Baillie in France every year. On one of those visits, he drew this to my attention and said, ‘What’s all this about, what do you think the background of this was?’”

Mr Ovenden described it as “a contribution to environmental literature and the conservation of historic cities”. “It was written in the late 1950s and 1960s, but it has this extraordinary contemporary resonance,” he said.

The first-ever publication of a previously unknown short satirical fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and accompanied by illustrations from the author together with an essay, "The Origin of Bovadium," by Richard Ovenden OBE.

As Christopher Tolkien notes in his Introduction, The Bovadium Fragments was a "satirical fantasy" written by his father, which grew out of a planning controversy that erupted in Oxford in the late 1940s, when J.R.R. Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.

Written initially for his own amusement, Tolkien’s tale was a private academic jest that poked gentle fun at the pomposity of archaeologists and the hideousness of college crockery. However, it was at the same time expressing a barbed cri de coeur against the inexorable rise of motor transport that was overwhelming the tranquillity of his beloved city. Interest in publishing it in the 1960s ultimately foundered, and the text remained hidden for 60 years.

In this new edition, Christopher Tolkien provides notes and commentary that will enable the reader to enjoy at last this tale of an imagined Oxford viewed through the lens of future (and not wholly reliable) academic study. The text is accompanied by a small selection of illustrations by the author, some of them previously unpublished, which while not created specifically for this work, convey something of the tone and setting of the story, thereby enriching the tale.

Richard Ovenden's accompanying essay, "The Origin of Bovadium," paints a vivid portrait of Oxford during that time. Its text is illustrated with contemporary photos of the period, together with the actual plans that sparked the controversy. He also provides rich background to the casus belli which led to the furore that Tolkien witnessed firsthand, as the embers of debate between town planners and the university colleges were fanned into flame.

Playful, arch, erudite, and ultimately tragically moving, The Bovadium Fragments is like nothing else that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, and its themes remain both provocative and timely. Within its lines may be found a concern for the fragility of our natural world, a love of which was shared by both father and son. As Christopher Tolkien’s final presentation of his father’s work, it is therefore perhaps fitting that The Bovadium Fragments should be their coda.

Trotter wrote:

The first-ever publication of a previously unknown short satirical fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and accompanied by illustrations from the author together with an essay, "The Origin of Bovadium," by Richard Ovenden OBE.

As Christopher Tolkien notes in his Introduction, The Bovadium Fragments was a "satirical fantasy" written by his father, which grew out of a planning controversy that erupted in Oxford in the late 1940s, when J.R.R. Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.

Written initially for his own amusement, Tolkien’s tale was a private academic jest that poked gentle fun at the pomposity of archaeologists and the hideousness of college crockery. However, it was at the same time expressing a barbed cri de coeur against the inexorable rise of motor transport that was overwhelming the tranquillity of his beloved city. Interest in publishing it in the 1960s ultimately foundered, and the text remained hidden for 60 years.

In this new edition, Christopher Tolkien provides notes and commentary that will enable the reader to enjoy at last this tale of an imagined Oxford viewed through the lens of future (and not wholly reliable) academic study. The text is accompanied by a small selection of illustrations by the author, some of them previously unpublished, which while not created specifically for this work, convey something of the tone and setting of the story, thereby enriching the tale.

Richard Ovenden's accompanying essay, "The Origin of Bovadium," paints a vivid portrait of Oxford during that time. Its text is illustrated with contemporary photos of the period, together with the actual plans that sparked the controversy. He also provides rich background to the casus belli which led to the furore that Tolkien witnessed firsthand, as the embers of debate between town planners and the university colleges were fanned into flame.

Playful, arch, erudite, and ultimately tragically moving, The Bovadium Fragments is like nothing else that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, and its themes remain both provocative and timely. Within its lines may be found a concern for the fragility of our natural world, a love of which was shared by both father and son. As Christopher Tolkien’s final presentation of his father’s work, it is therefore perhaps fitting that The Bovadium Fragments should be their coda.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-b ... 7366771?ean=9780063479081