Doug's New Tolkien Blog

So, one great piece of news for Tolkien fans and scholars is that Doug Anderson has just launched a new Tolkien blog, called TOLKIEN AND FANTASY.

Doug already has one blog going that he contributes to, WORMWOODIANA, but this is a collaborative blog and he's one of several (three or so) people who posts there on a fairly regular basis. While a lot of interesting things show up on Wormwoodiana, making it someplace I enjoy checking every few days, the focus is wider than my own interests, including a lot of horror and a surprising emphasis on early twentieth century publication of horror fiction in Australia.

Now he's branched out and started a new Tolkien-centric blog all his own: TOLKIEN & FANTASY -- the first two posts of which list the contents of the forthcoming volume (VIII) of TOLKIEN STUDIES and news of the new Paul Thomas edition of E. R. Eddison's saga STYRBIORN THE STRONG [1926].* The latter has been far too hard to find for far too long; while not as weird and wonderful and wonky as THE WORM OUROBOROS it's pure E.R.E. and shows just what an Icelandic saga written in the earlier twentieth century would look like. Plus, of course, Paul is a great editor and I always enjoy his introductions and notes.

Here's the link:

http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/

Wormwoodia itself has just posted one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen there. Ever wondered what R. W. Chambers' own drawing of The King in Yellow himself would look like? Wonder no more: a publicity poster from the time of the book's first publication [1895], part of the Forrie J. Ackerman collection. What's more, it turns out part of that design was used for the old Ace Books edition's cover, which I had a copy of once long ago but no more. Here's that link as well:

http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2011/05/robert-w-chamberss-artwork-for-king-in.html

So, good stuff, and I expect that much more good stuff will follow. This new blog's debut is definitely a good day for Tolkien studies.

--John R.

current reading: WATERSHIP DOWN

*I have a copy of the original edition of this (bought, in all places, in Bibliomaniacs, a great little used bookstore in downtown Delavan Wisconsin), but then I've read all of Eddison, including POEMS, LETTERS, AND MEMORIES OF PHILIP SIDNEY NAIRN [1916] and the unpublished juvenalia in the Bodley.