Bob Foster and Dick Plotz

So thanks to Carl H for this one: a link to a Tolkien Day event featuring two key figures in early Tolkiendom: Robert Foster and Richard Plotz.

Foster is author of A GUIDE TO MIDDLE-EARTH and then later of THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO MIDDLE-EARTH, expanded to include THE SILMARILLION. This was a book so massively useful that Christopher Tolkien himself acknowledged and praised it (in his introduction to the first volume of HME). 

Plotz founded The Tolkien Sociey of America (TSA*), and launched the most successful of all the early Tolkien fanzines: THE TOLKIEN JOURNAL.

It's amazing to get a chance to see fellow Tolkien fans and Tolkien scholars who dropped out of Tolkien studies before I even got into it emerge and tell their stories. Kudos to those who pulled this off for Tolkien Collector's Guide: **

Here's the link

https://youtu.be/CE9sUPMzs6c?t=11371

--JDR

*not to be confused with The Tolkien Society, based in England.

**not to be confused with The Tolkien Collector.