On December 17th, Kent State University Press is releasing a new collection of essays from noted Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger. http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2016/there-would-always-be-a-fairy-tale-2/

Devoted to Tolkien, the teller of tales and co-creator of the myths they brush against, these essays focus on his lifelong interest in and engagement with fairy stories, the special world that he called faërie, a world they both create and inhabit, and with the elements that make that world the special place it is. They cover a range of subjects, from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings and their place within the legendarium he called the Silmarillion to shorter works like “The Story of Kullervo” and “Smith of Wootton Major.”

From the pen of eminent Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, the individual essays in this collection were written over a span of twenty years, each written to fit the parameters of a conference, an anthology, or both. They are revised slightly from their original versions to eliminate repetition and bring them up to date. Grouped loosely by theme, they present an unpatterned mosaic, depicting topics from myth to truth, from social manners to moral behavior, from textual history to the micro particles of Middle-earth.

Together these essays present a complete picture of a man as complicated as the books that bear his name―an independent and unorthodox thinker who was both a believer and a doubter able to maintain conflicting ideas in tension, a teller of tales both romantic and bitter, hopeful and pessimistic, in equal parts tragic and comedic. A man whose work does not seek for right or wrong answers so much as a way to accommodate both; a man of antitheses.

Scholars of fantasy literature generally and of Tolkien particularly will find much of value in this insightful collection by a seasoned explorer of Tolkien’s world of faërie.

Paperback: 280 pages
Publisher: The Kent State University Press
Release Date: December 17, 2017
MSRP: $24.95
ISBN: 160635308X / 978-1606353080

Contents

• Acknowledgments ix
• Introduction xi
• Style, Usage, and Abbreviations xiii
• Note to the Reader xvii
• Part One: “A Perilous Land”: Defining Faërie 1
• “There Would Always Be a ‘Fairy-tale’”: J. R. R. Tolkien and the Folklore Controversy 5
• But What Did He Really Mean? 17
• Re-creating Reality 32
• War, Death, and Fairy Stories in the Work of J. R. R. Tolkien 49
• Eucatastrophe and the Dark 59
• Part Two: “Faërie Begins”: The Nuts and Bolts of Sub-creation 67
• Words and World-making: The Particle Physics of Middle-earth 71
• Myth, History, and Time-travel: The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers 76
• Politically Incorrect Tolkien 90
• The Jewels, the Stone, the Ring, and the Making of Meaning 100
• Making Choices: Moral Ambiguity in Tolkien’s Major Fiction 113
• Part Three: “Arresting Strangeness”: Making It Different 125
• The Forests and the Trees: Sal and Ian in Faërie 129
• How Trees Behave—Or Do They? 145
• Myth and Truth in Tolkien’s Legendarium 157
• Fays, Corrigans, Elves, and More: Tolkien’s Dark Ladies 165
• Part Four: Boiling Bones; Serving Soup 179
• Tolkien, Kalevala, and Middle-earth 183
• Tolkien’s Celtic Connection 196
• Tolkien’s French Connection 203
• Drowned Lands 213
• Voyaging about : Tolkien and Celtic Navigatio 221
• Permissions and Acknowledgments 229
• Notes 231
• Works Cited 240
• Index 248

An interesting lot coming up this week at Sotheby's London auction "The Library of an English Bibliophile Part VII". In this lot are two uncommon first editions, and two much more scarce offprints. For those looking to expand beyond Middle-earth and have some important works of J. R. R. Tolkien in your collection, you could do much worse than these.

Lot number 286 : "Tolkien, J.R.R. Four Volumes, Comprising:"

'Middle English "Losenger"', Essais de Philologie Moderne. Paris: Societe d’edition "Les Belles Lettres", 1953, 8vo (243 x 160mm.), separate offprint, "FROM THE LIBRARY OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN" booklabel on upper wrapper, original printed wrappers, [cf Hammond B20], some creases;

'Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography', The Review of English Studies. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1925, 8vo (229 x 159mm.), separate offprint, original printed wrappers, [cf Hammond C17];

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962, 8vo (221 x 142mm.), FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE (‘Cat’ on p. [48]), original pictorial boards, DUST-JACKET, [Hammond A6(a)], minor tear to head of upper panel of dust-jacket;

Smith of Wooton Major. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967, small 8vo (149 x 106mm.), FIRST EDITION, illustrations by Pauline Baynes, original pictorial boards (first state), [Hammond A9(a)], extremities slightly worn, spine faded;

all within collector’s chemise and red-morocco backed slipcase (4)

Estimate £500 — £700

Update: LOT SOLD. 1,250 GBP (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium)

[Update] The calendar is now printed and available for shipping, so get your order in!

The JRR Tolkien newsletter "Beyond Bree" is producing a new Calendar for 2018. The theme is "Tolkien's Poetry": sing with the elves, men, hobbits and even trolls as the beloved poetry of Tolkien’s works is interpreted by an international range of artists from across the globe! Orders are being taken for the "Beyond Bree" 2018 Calendar. PayPal is accepted, too. Please spread the word. If you would like to know more about the Calendar or "Beyond Bree", contact Nancy Martsch at beyondbree@yahoo.com

Beyond Bree
is happy to announce its
2018 Calendar

Hey come, derry dol, merry dol, my darling! We are delighted to celebrate
the poetry of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth in the 2018 calendar!
It is time to go from The Shire to Mordor and sing with elves, men, hobbits
and even trolls as the beloved poetry of Tolkien’s works is interpreted by an
international range of artists from across the globe.

The color and black and white calendar will be 11 x 8 ½ inches,
opening to 11 x 17 inches. It will have both Middle-earth and real world holidays so you
can follow the travels and adventures of your favorite characters.

Pricing: $20 plus shipping - USA $2.00, the rest of the world $5.00.
For large orders, please inquire for details.
For PayPal orders please add $1.00. When using PayPal, log onto your account and
enter your payment amount by using the “Pay or Send Money” button. Make payments in
US Dollars by entering the Beyond Bree e-mail address beyondbree@yahoo.com and $21
plus your shipping fee of either $2 or $5.
Send check or postal money order (in USD drawn on a US bank) to:
Nancy Martsch, PO Box 55372
Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, USA
You may send US currency, at your own risk, in a sturdy envelope.

For more information please e-mail: beyondbree@yahoo.com

UPDATE: The auction is now running, and many items have sold (Buy It Now) or have bids - if you are interested, check it out! There are many more pieces added after this post was made, so be sure to browse through the collection. https://www.facebook.com/ChangelingArtistCollective/photos/?tab=album&album_id=200247120389988
--

I recently saw a facebook post about the Changeling Artist Collective, an online group of artists from around the world. They hold monthly auctions of original artwork, and the upcoming September auction's theme is "There and Back Again", based on the books of J. R. R. Tolkien. I haven't seen any art from these creators before, but there are definitely wonderful works available. If you are interested, there will be more instructions posted at the time the auction starts (September 12th) on their website.

Auction starts on September 12 and ends on September 16. Bidding (in prior auctions, I assume the same here) is done through Facebook, and payment is made directly to the artist - be sure to check the description of any art you are interested in, as the country of origin and payment methods accepted are different for each artist.

There and Back Again – September Auction Preview

Art and text below reproduced with permission from the collective.

Title: Gollum
Artist: Jana Heidersdorf
Medium: pencil on paper
Size: 21 cm x 29,7 cm // 8,3″ x 11,7″

About the artist:
Jana is an illustrator of imaginary and creepy things located in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
Her work explores everything that lurks in the dark, may it be feral creatures or shapeless thoughts and feelings.

site | instagram | tumblr | etsy

Title: Barrow-wight
Artist: A.M.Sartor
Medium: Ink, colored pencil, gouache, pastel
Size: 4″X6″

About the artist:
A.M. Sartor is a freelance illustrator that resides in Seattle, WA. Her style is greatly influenced by works from the Golden Age of Illustration, Ukiyo-e and contemporary pop surrealism. Her art is a culmination of 10 years in the entertainment and publishing industry, and is a mix between traditional and digital media.

site | instagram | twitter | tumblr | facebook

Title: Tom Bombadil
Artist: Larry MacDougall
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Size: 9″X12″

Title: The Green Dragon Pub
Artist: Larry MacDougall
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Size: 9″X12″

Title: Ring Wraith
Artist: Larry MacDougall
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Size: 9″X12″

Title: Sam
Artist: Larry MacDougall
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Size: 9″X12″

Title: Frodo
Artist: Larry MacDougall
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Size: 9″X12″

About the artist:
Larry is a Fantasy and Faerie Tale artist, living and working in Canada.

tumblr | twitter | facebook | deviantart

Title: Ent Wife
Artist: Rachel Quinlan
Medium: ink, watercolor, gouache
Size: 9.25 inches x 11 inches

About the artist:
Rachel is a Michigan based fantasy artist and illustrator.
Her style is heavily influenced by illustrators from the Golden Age of Illustration.
She love fairy tales, folk tales, nature, and anything dark and weird. Her ultimate goal is to create art that is immersive and fantastic.

site | instagram | facebook | tumblr | twitter | etsy

Title: In a Hole in the Ground There Lived a Hobbit
Artist: Mariya Prytula
Medium: Watercolor
Size: 9″X12″

Title: Elevensies
Artist: Mariya Prytula
Medium: Watercolor
Size: 9″X12″

About the artist:
Mariya started drawing at a young age and to the dismay of her parents, her very early drawings often included UFOs and rather anatomically correct people.Self-taught in art, she completed her degree in Biology with emphasis on medicine at Baylor University. Mariya currently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and their velcro Border Collie, Lucky.

site | instagram | facebook | etsy | medium

Title: Galadriel
Artist: Belinda Jane Morris
Medium: watercolour, with pastel and pencil on paper
Size: 9 x 12″ (22.86 x 30.48cm)

About the artist:
Belinda Morris is a freelance illustrator working in Fantasy and Children’s Book Illustration. She has been illustrating professionally since 2010, specializing in painting people and animals using watercolour, pencil, ink and gouache. Belinda currently lives in Melbourne, Australia and while not making art she works as a sales assistant at an art store encouraging others to be better artists.

site | instagram | tumblr | facebook

Title: Breath of Death
Artist: Jayde Hilliard
Medium: Ink, Watercolor, Acrylics, and Gold Pigments on Arches 140 lb Watercolor Paper
Size: 8 inches x 12.75 inches

About the artist:
Jayde has been creating art since an early age. In 2010, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from UT Arlington. Her illustrative artwork is inspired by fashion, nature, pop culture, and human emotions, as well as folklore and old fairy tales.

twitter | instagram | facebook | tumblr

Title: The Two Towers – diptych
Artist: Melissa Gay
Medium: sumi (ground from stick) and acrylic on watercolor block
Size: Each piece approx. 4.5 x 12 inches (may be matted together or separately at buyer request)

About the artist:
Melissa Gay is a critically-acclaimed artist of speculative fiction book covers, roleplaying games, botany manuals, and even a tarot deck. Her character redesigns have been featured on io9 and tor.com, and her original paintings are in the hands of private collectors around the world. Whether depicting criminal masterminds, comic book heroes, deep space, eldritch horror, child mermaids or sentient bugs, she strives to inject diversity and a touch of dreamlike wonder into all her work.

site | twitter | instagram | facebook

It's calendar season, and here is a really wonderful one from German artist Jenny Dolfen. She works in watercolors, and there is definitely a strong thread of Tolkien running through her interests. You can see more of her background and artwork at her website, www.goldseven.de.

For the next few days, pre-orders are available through her shop on etsy. The calendars (30x42cm) should be shipped around early September, and she says that all pre-orders get a few art cards (A5 size) as an extra.

I've ordered mine!

It is that time of year again, when Beyond Bree is announcing their Calendar for next year. Each year has a different theme, with 2017 being themed around travel. I especially like the Tomas Hijo artwork already shown below! I will be ordering myself a copy as usual.

Beyond Bree

is happy to announce its
2017 Calendar

Roads Go Ever On! We are delighted to take a journey through Tolkien’s Middle-earth in 2017 by horse, boat, wing and foot!
Travel through the First, Second, and Third Ages of Middle-earth with the beloved characters of JRR Tolkien’s works as interpreted by a truly international range of artists from across the globe.

The color and black and white calendar will be 11 x 8 ½ inches,
opening to 11 x 17 inches. It will have both Middle-earth and real world holidays so you can follow the travels and adventures of your favorite characters.

Pricing: $20 plus shipping - USA $2.00, the rest of the world $5.00.
For large orders, please inquire for details.
For PayPal orders please add $1.00.
Send PayPal payments (in USD) to:
beyondbree@yahoo.com

Send check or postal money order
(in USD drawn on a US bank) to:
Nancy Martsch, PO Box 55372
Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, USA

You may send US currency, at your
own risk, in a sturdy envelope.
For more information please e-mail: beyondbree@yahoo.com

The Tolkien Society is just about to publish the proceedings of the 2012 Tolkien Society Conference in two volumes, with a lot of very interesting materials available for the first time:

The first volume focuses primarily on Tolkien’s life, examining the influence of war, philosophy, and religion on his mythology. The second volume is much more diverse, covering themes from medievalism and romanticism through to fantasy and modernity. With contributions from the likes of John Garth, Colin Duriez, Ronald Hutton, and Janet Brennan Croft, The Return of the Ring: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Conference 2012 is essential reading for scholars and casual readers alike.

The publication date is just a few weeks away now on June 9th, and if you pre-order before then you can save £5 on the books. With all profits from the work being donated to Tolkien to the World, there is more than one good reason to support the editorial staff, the Society, and your own reading pleasure.

Publication Information (from https://www.tolkiensociety.org/society/publications/sales/return-of-the-ring/)

Publication Date: 9 June 2016
Publisher: Luna Press Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-911143-02-4 and 978-1-911143-03-1
Page Numbers: 276 and 216

Volume 1

BIOGRAPHY

WAR AND ITS EFFECTS

PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS

RELIGION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

THE MYTHIC DIMENSION

Volume 2

MEDIEVALISM

FANTASY

DIVERSITY

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/society/publications/sales/return-of-the-ring/

Humble Bundle is an online charitable service that offers content from various ebook, audiobook and computer software companies at very low prices, with a portion of all sales going to charity. This week's book bundle includes The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings books, and two other secondary collections - Tolkien and the West and The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (note that last one clocks in at over 26 hours of audiobook content!). Depending on what you pay, you get some or all of these titles, but you can have all of them for a minimum donation of $15.

The editions for the primary titles are all the original American full cast dramatizations as broadcast on National Public Radio.

The Modern Scholar: Tolkien and the West: Recovering the Lost Tradition of Europe

The works of J.R.R. Tolkien are quite possibly the most widely read pieces of literature written in the 20th Century. But as Professor Michael Drout illuminates in this engaging course of lectures, Tolkien's writings are built upon a centuries-old literary tradition that developed in Europe and is quite uniquely Western in its outlook and style. Drout explores how that tradition still resonates with us to this day, even if many Modernist critics would argue otherwise. He begins the course with the allegory of a tower - a device which Tolkien himself crafted in one of the most famous academic works of all time - as a way to illuminate how Tolkien's works continue and build upon a tradition that goes back as far as Beowulf itself. Drout's lectures take us on a literary journey that explores Tolkien's most celebrated writings: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. As he brings these works life, he explains Tolkien's technique and themes, which he shows reverberate all the way back though the western literary tradition. In the end Drout shows us how J.R.R. Tolkien crafted literary worlds that the reader cares desperately about and wishes to save.

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings

A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis C.S.

Lewis is the twentieth century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis's Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.

In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. Lewis maps the medieval mind, accepts Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into a breathtaking story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. This extraordinary group biography also focuses on Charles Williams, strange acolyte of Romantic love, and Owen Barfield, an esoteric philosopher who became, for a time, Saul Bellow's guru. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized sanity, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years--and did so.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/lord-of-the-rings-audiobooks

In case you missed Doug's offer on his blog, he has extra hardcover copies of Tales Before Tolkien that he edited, and he is offering them for $13 postpaid (to USA, inquire for international shipping costs) for the month of January.

Here is the table of contents:

Introduction
“The Elves” by Ludwig Tieck
“The Golden Key” by George Macdonald
“Puss-Cat Mew” by E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen
“The Griffin and the Minor Canon” by Frank R. Stockton
“The Demon Pope” by Richard Garnett
“The Story of Sigurd” retold by Andrew Lang
“The Folk of the Mountain Door” by William Morris
“Black Heart and White Heart: A Zulu Idyll” by H. Rider Haggard
“The Dragon Tamers” by E. Nesbit
“The Far Islands” by John Buchan
“The Drawn Arrow” by Clemence Housman
“The Enchanted Buffalo” by L. Frank Baum
“Chu-bu and Sheemish” by Lord Dunsany
“The Baumoff Explosive” by William Hope Hodgson
“The Regent of the North” by Kenneth Morris
“The Coming of the Terror” by Arthur Machen
“The Elf Trap” by Francis Stevens
“The Thin Queen of Elfhame” by James Branch Cabell
“The Woman of the Wood” by A. Merritt
“Golithos the Ogre” by E. A. Wyke-Smith
“The Story of Alwina” by Austin Tappan Wright
“A Christmas Play” by David Lindsay
Author Notes and Recommended Reading

Having ordered an inscribed one myself, my next goal is to get all of the contributors to sign it as well.

http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2016/01/tales-before-tolkien-hardcover-special.html

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first publication of The Lord of the Rings, The Tolkien Society is offering The Ring Goes Ever On: Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference for the discount price of £10 (plus shipping). At a whopping 835 pages in two oversized volumes, this publication contains nearly 100 articles from the likes of Tom Shippey, Verlyn Flieger, John Garth and Dimitra Fimi. This low price is quite a deal for this much scholarship. I asked the Society for how long the discount price will be available - it sounds like it could go back up again in as little as a few months from now.

For a full listing of contents, see the books' Tolkien Gateway page.

Here is the Tolkien Society page for placing your order.

Edited by Sarah Wells
Tolkien Society, 2008. 2 volumes, 421 and 414 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-0-905520-24-7
Tolkien Society, 2008. pdf, 835 pages, CD, ISBN 978-0-905520-27-8