Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings bear backpacks. Here’s a quick survey of the references to packs.…

The drawing order of the four views of the Lonely Mountain is difficult to ascertain. The first one seems to be the watercolour ​“Smaug Flies Round the Mountain” (TAI #111), and may date from the same time as Riding down into Rivendell (TAI #227), as the title style matches.…

Ballantine Books’ March 1969 paperback releases of Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham and Lin Carter’s Tolkien: A Look Behind ​“The Lord of the Rings” had advertisements on the final page. One side of that page was an ad for the company’s paperbacks of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The other side was for a photo book.

Ballantine was a leading American publisher of science fiction and in 1967, moreover, had begun what turned into an ambitious program of reprinted fantasy classics, starting with works by ER Eddison and Mervyn Peake. One might have expected advertisements for The Worm Ouroboros and Titus Groan at the end of these March 1969 Tolkienian releases, as if to invite readers to read more great fantasy.

Instead, the other side of that final page advertised ​“In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World”: Selections [from Henry David Thoreau] and Photographs by Eliot Porter.…

On Friday October 22^nd 2021, Moria Gate, the latest Aubusson Tapestry, was presented to the public in the presence of Christopher Tolkien’s widow, Baillie Tolkien. It is the 12^th in an ongoing series which will contain at least 16 pieces, one of which is a Númenórean carpet.

Commenting on the tapestry, Baillie expressed her delight at seeing the piece whole, as it officially reunited for the first time two previously separate sections of the artwork which, at one time, [had] been thought to be separate.…

A trilogy of novels by T.M. Doran, published over ten years, is complete, and Tolkien fans may like to know about it, maybe even read some or all of it.

1. Toward the Bleam (published in 2011 by Ignatius, 467 pages). Read this first novel of the three as you’d watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie, ready to enjoy some clever craftsmanship. Here, the MacGuffin is the Red Book of Westmarch (never named as such). It is discovered by accident in a remote cave in northeast England when ​“John” — a young J.R.R. Tolkien (never named thus) takes shelter from a storm.…