The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2019

Abstract

The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2019 David Bratman (bio), Kate Neville (bio), Jennifer Rogers (bio), Jonathan Evans (bio), Robin Anne Reid (bio), John Wm. Houghton (bio), and John Magoun (bio) Introduction [David Bratman] Notable books of the year in Tolkien studies included Tolkien's Lost Chaucer by John M. Bowers (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019), a history and description, with extensive excerpts, of the unfinished and unpublished Clarendon Press edition of Chaucer that Tolkien worked on in the 1920s; and Tolkien's Library: An Annotated Checklist by Oronzo Cilli (Edinburgh: Luna Press, 2019), a first approximation of a complete annotated bibliography of every book Tolkien is known to have owned or read. Tolkien's Lost Chaucer received the 2021 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies from the Mythopoeic Society, and Tolkien's Library received the 2020 Tolkien Society Award for Best Book. After a year in which its only publication was a single monograph, the Tolkien specialty press Walking Tree Publishers delivered a bumper crop in 2019 of four anthologies of original articles on particular areas of Tolkien studies, two of them massive volumes of over 400 pages with at least 20 articles each, a third almost as large but with fewer articles, and a fourth briefer but also with 21 articles. The four, all bearing the imprint of Zurich: Walking Tree, 2019, are: Music in Tolkien's Work and Beyond, edited by Julian Eilmann and Friedhelm Schneidewind; Sub-creating Arda: World-building in J.R.R. Tolkien's Work, its Precursors and its Legacies, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Thomas Honegger; "Something Has Gone Crack": New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War, edited by Janet Brennan Croft and Annika Röttinger; and Tolkien and the Classics, edited by Roberto Arduini, Giampaolo Canzonieri, and Claudio A. Testi. They form nos. 39–42, respectively, in the publisher's Cormarë series. Other anthologies of the year were published by Tolkien societies. The Netherlands Tolkien Society, Unquendor, released a 2019 issue of Lembas Extra under the title The World Tolkien Built, edited by Renée Vink (Leiden, Netherlands: Unquendor, 2019), and the Tolkien Society issued the proceedings of its 2018 Seminar as Tolkien the Pagan? Reading Middle-earth through a Spiritual Lens, edited by Anna Milon (Edinburgh: Luna Press, 2019). In addition, there were three [End Page 227] Tolkien-related articles in The Faithful Imagination: Papers from the 2018 Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C. S. Lewis & Friends, Taylor University, edited by Joe Ricke and Ashley Chu (Hamden, CT: Winged Lion Press, 2019). Journals of the year include volume 16 of the present journal, Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review, available on Project MUSE; and two issues of Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature from the Mythopoeic Society, archived at dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/, vol. 37.2 (whole number 134, dated Spring–Summer 2019) and vol. 38.1 (whole number 135, dated Fall–Winter 2019). The open-access electronic Journal of Tolkien Research, hosted at scholar.valpo.edu, published its volumes 7 and 8 during 2019. An article from Journal of Tolkien Research vol 8.1, "Deconstructing Durin's Day: Science, Scientific Fan Fiction, and the Fan-Scholar" by Kristine Larsen, received the Tolkien Society's 2020 Best Article award. Coverage this year also includes multiple articles from volume 9 of the Journal of Inklings Studies, sponsored by the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society and collaborating organizations; volume 1 of I Quaderni di Arda: Rivista di studi tolkieniani e mondi fantastici, an online journal hosted at iquadernidiarda.it, which publishes articles in both English and Italian; volume 30 of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, a publication of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts; volumes 48 and 49 of Christian Scholar's Review, a journal sponsored by a consortium of U. S. Christian colleges and universities; and two Tolkien-specific newsletters, the Tolkien Society's bi-monthly Amon Hen and the American Mensa Tolkien Special Interest Group's Beyond Bree. Works by Tolkien [David Bratman] A children's lecture by Tolkien, titled simply "Dragons," was an...