iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dr Grace Khuri @gracekhuri.bsky.social · 2h

For my new role as RA for the #OxfordUniversity project: 'British Fantasy and the #FirstWorldWar', I'll be drawing on my extensive research experience with the widespread mythic framing of #WorldWarI. Below is an illustrated article on the topic. academia.edu/113103338/Th... #Norsemyth #medievalsky

academia.edu

The Politics of Norse Medievalism in the British Press during the First World War

The Norse-Germanic branch of medievalism in Britain during the First World War has been strangely neglected in both literary-cultural and historical scholarship. 1 Several studies have addressed that ...

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James K. Tauber @jtauber.com · 29/09/2026

ICYMI, Asterisk recently gained: - CLDF import / export (suggested by @philaut.bsky.social) - explicit dark/light mode toggling (suggested by @lodomerian.com) - a symbol palette for hard-to-type characters (suggested by @clyde.eurosky.social) asterisk.jtauber.com

asterisk.jtauber.com

Asterisk

A workbench for comparative philology.

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Tolkienista @tolkienista.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This e-book brings together ten articles by researchers and scholars of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works, written in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings, a milestone commemorated in 2024 and 2025.

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James K. Tauber @jtauber.com · 28/09/2026

This wonderful book of Tolkien scholarship (available for free as PDF) is now available. I was honoured to be invited to write the foreword. www.livrosabertos.abcd.usp.br/portaldelivr...

livrosabertos.abcd.usp.br

Down from the door where it began: 70 years of the Lord of the Rings | Portal de Livros Abertos da USP

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Will Sherwood @willsherwood.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm thrilled and proud to announce that I completed and submitted my PhD thesis on #Tolkien and British #Romanticism this morning. What an incredible start to a sunny week! Now, does anyone have any jobs for someone with extensive teaching experience?! Time to put this knowledge to good use!

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Tolkien Books Database @books.digitaltolkien.com · 27/09/2026

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell 2016 Paperback Edition HarperCollins · impressions 1–13 · ISBN 0-00-759009-1 books.digitaltolkien.com/TRGM

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell, 2016 Paperback Edition, impressions 1–13, with its cover

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Text and Language Lab @textandlanguagelab.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

@jtauber.com is also teaching two much-anticipated courses in the coming semester: 1-Digital Tolkien 2-Applying Python for Digital Humanities and Social Studies Two exciting opportunities to explore digital approaches to literature, language, and the humanities.

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Text and Language Lab @textandlanguagelab.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We research narrative fiction — but how? 📚🔍 In our new series, “Meet Our Researchers” get to know James Tauber and get a first glimpse into his PhD research. More fascinating insights and discoveries from @jtauber.com to come. ✨ youtu.be/dblAizA_IHM

youtu.be

The Language of Fiction - James Tauber

YouTube video by Text and Language Lab

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 23/09/2026

Still the active UK A-Format Paperback of The Hobbit it seems.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 23/09/2026

the full spread like that is amazing

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Tolkien Books Database @books.digitaltolkien.com · 23/09/2026

You can now easily get to a particular ISBN by typing any part of it and filtering the list down, clicking the full ISBN and getting to the page for all variants with that ISBN. books.digitaltolkien.com/by-isbn/

books.digitaltolkien.com

By ISBN

List of ISBNs in database

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

Depending on how you count, between a quarter and a third of the covers incorporate that original design.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

On this Hobbit Day, enjoy the over 100 covers that have been used on the UK editions alone. Which is your favourite? books.digitaltolkien.com/work/hobbit/...

books.digitaltolkien.com

The Hobbit

Bibliographic data for The Hobbit.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

New article on our Timelines Project annotations.digitaltolkien.com/articles/why...

annotations.digitaltolkien.com

Why we need the Timelines Project

An article by Tyler Hilgendorf on Tolkien Annotations.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

arguably it was already linked :-) bsky.app/profile/digi...

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Marcel R. Bülles 📚💍🌋🎉 @thetolkienist.com · 22/09/2026

Chäppi Börfdei, Frodo & Bilbo Baggins 🎂 🍰 🎉 🥳 Issue 201 of the all things Tolkien newsletter, the Roving Ranger, is out now. Any shares are most welcome! ☺️ Events, shows, scholarship, fandom, and JRRT soon in Westminster Abbey 🔜☕🍵🎉 steady.page/en/thetolkie...

steady.page

The Two-hundred and first Roving Ranger

The Roving Ranger #201 brings you all the interesting things Tolkienian of the last week and the weeks upcoming, curated by the Tolkienist.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

The second video is about the opening to The Hobbit and is the only video on the channel that ever went even close to viral. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-4A...

youtube.com

The Linguistic Magic of the Opening to the Hobbit

YouTube video by Digital Tolkien Project

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

Two videos to watch this Hobbit Day... The first is on point of view in The Hobbit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkTa...

youtube.com

Point of View in The Hobbit

YouTube video by Digital Tolkien Project

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

On this Hobbit Day, enjoy the over 100 covers that have been used on the UK editions alone. Which is your favourite? books.digitaltolkien.com/work/hobbit/...

books.digitaltolkien.com

The Hobbit

Bibliographic data for The Hobbit.

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Stef Midlock @stef.athrabeth.com · 22/09/2026

Mark your calendars for October 3!

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Athrabeth Podcast @podcast.athrabeth.com · 22/09/2026

Join us for a special minisode with guest Jeremy Edmonds about the @tolkienguide.com’s 20th anniversary livestream on October 3-4! Athrabeth will be joining this epic 20-hour event! Find out all about it here! Thanks @uruloke.tolkienguide.com! athrabeth.simplecast.com/episodes/edm...

Three photos of smiling people wearing headphones: Stef Midlock, Jude Vais, and Jeremy Edmonds. White text against a black background reads, “Athrabeth minisode with Jeremy Edmonds” and “Tolkien Collector's Guide 20th Anniversary Livestream”.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 22/09/2026

typographically, my favourite edition of Unfinished Tales

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 02/09/2026

A thread about our various public sites...

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

Today is the 89th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit. Here's a thread on interesting glimpses the book gave us into the legendarium Tolkien had at that stage already been working on for over twenty years but which readers at the time would have had no sense of.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

Was not planned but entirely appropriate that today's book from the Tolkien Books Database (which you should all follow) is the current UK mainline B-format paperback of the Hobbit.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

There are also, of course, the reverse: things that entered the legendarium first through The Hobbit. Of courses there's the Ring, Gandalf, and hobbits themselves. But less obvious is "Moria" (although just conceived of as goblin mines initially) and "Durin".

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

And I forgot "Dorwinion", home of the potent wine in H 09.025 and H 09.035. In Túrin Son of Húrin & Glórund the Dragon, we read: ...but their heads were mazed by the wine of Dor-Winion that went in their veins, and they soundly slept on the soft needles of the tall pine-trees that towered above.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

The draft starts off the same as we get in 1937 but continues... "And anyway [others >] his castle stands no more and [his >] he is flown [added: to another darker place] – Beren and Tinúviel broke his power, but that is quite another story." Beren and Lúthien almost mentioned in The Hobbit!

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

The original 1937 version is slightly different: "Don't be absurd! That is a job quite beyond the powers of all the dwarves put together, if they could all be collected again from the four corners of the world." But what is interesting is the very first draft we have of this line...

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

In H 01.136, when Thorin suggests going after the Necromancer, Gandalf replies: "Don’t be absurd! He is an enemy far beyond the powers of all the dwarves put together, if they could all be collected again from the four corners of the world."

cite.digitaltolkien.com

H 01.136

“Don’t be absurd! … you!”

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

And there are other connexions and allusions too. The Arkenstone and the Silmarils. The Elvenking and Thingol. And of course, the matter of the Necromancer.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

And, in the 1980s, the History of Middle-earth (volumes 1–4) made it clear just how much of that background existed prior to The Hobbit.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

To readers in 1937, this would have seemed throwaway background. By the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954/1955, it would have been evident there was more to these stories. With the publication of The Silmarillion 1977 (forty years later!) it was clear just how rich the background was.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

And finally in the same paragraph: "They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk."

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

The paragraph continues "In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon, but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost." So we are also told of a lost land of great forests that the Wood-elves wandered in.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

That amazing sentence then ends "before some came back into the Wide World." And so, back in 1937, we get this reference to the Three Kindreds, the Sundering of the Elves, the crafting of things such as the Silmarils, and the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

The sentence about what the elves did in Faerie continues: "...and invented their magic and their cunning craft in the making of beautiful and marvellous things..." Of course we now know what those "beautiful and marvellous things" included but, in 1937, readers had no idea.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

But there's more: "There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more learned" And so among those that went West, there was a three-way division: Light, Deep, and Sea. Decades later we learn the names Vanyar, Noldor, and Teleri.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

It starts to get really interesting: "For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West." So we are introduced to the division between those elves that went West and those that didn't.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

We are told that the Wood-elves "differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise." This expression "High Elves of the West" is in the original 1937 edition and so is not a later invention although the earlier occurrence of it originally read "Gnomes".

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

But the most remarkable glimpse of the background legendarium comes in a paragraph in Chapter 8, H 08.131, where we are told about the Wood-elves...

cite.digitaltolkien.com

H 08.131

The feasting people … People.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

And so we are told of a group of Elves, the "Gnomes" (later the "High Elves of the West") whose city Gondolin was destroyed by dragons and goblins in the "Goblin-wars". We also find out Gondolin had a king.

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

The rest of the paragraph reads: "This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore."

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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026

The paragraph continues (in both the original and present editions): "They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars. They must have come from a dragon’s hoard or goblin plunder, for dragons and goblins destroyed that city many ages ago."

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