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Category: Tolkien

Bovadium Fragments is long-lost short story from J.R.R. Tolkien lamenting car culture makes for a snarky and sneaky release.

Found via Slashdot, it looks like Tolkien’s got another new work to read – this time its satire! The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origins of Bovadium is a fictional retort to Tolkien’s real world dilemma of the automobile revolution changing his beloved Oxford.

The Amazon description reads: As Christopher Tolkien notes in his Introduction, The Bovadium Fragments was a “satirical fantasy” written by his father, which grew out of a planning controversy that erupted in Oxford in the late 1940s, when J.R.R. Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.

JRR Tolkien vs the Automobile

Written initially for his own amusement, Tolkien’s tale was a private academic jest that poked gentle fun at the pomposity of archaeologists and the hideousness of college crockery. However, it was at the same time expressing a barbed cri de coeur against the inexorable rise of motor transport that was overwhelming the tranquility of his beloved city. Interest in publishing it in the 1960s ultimately foundered, and the text remained hidden for 60 years.

Anyone who has read Tolkien’s letters will know that he is at his funniest when filled with rage, and The Bovadium Fragments is a work brimming with Tolkien’s fury — specifically, ire over mankind’s obsession with motor vehicles. Tolkien’s anger is expressed through a playful satire told from the perspective of a group of future archaeologists who are studying the titular fragments, which tell of a civilization that asphyxiated itself on its own exhaust fumes. Tolkien’s fictional fragments use the language of ancient myth, reframing modern issues like traffic congestion and parking with a grandeur that highlights their total absurdity. It is Tolkien at his angriest and funniest, making The Bovadium Fragments a minor treasure in his ever-growing catalog.

From the LA Times Book review:

“the spirit of ‘Isengard,’ if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case.” Readers of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) will recognize the allusion. In the author’s magnum opus, Isengard is a kind of industrial hell, endlessly feeding its furnaces with felled trees… The Bovadium Fragments brings Tolkien’s visceral hatred of such machines to the fore for the first time — on the same level as Isengard or the scoured Shire. In Tolkien’s story, the words “Motores” and “monsters” are interchangeable. And with his grand, mythic register, Tolkien defamiliarizes the car enough for modern readers to see it as he does — as truly monstrous. “[T]he Motores continued to bring forth an ever larger progeny,” Tolkien writes. “[M]any of the citizens harboured the monsters, feeding them with the costly oils and essences which they required, and building houses for them in their gardens….”

Get The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origins of Bovadium at Amazon or your local bookshop!

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Imagine sitting and writing at the desk where J.R.R. Tolkien worked on The Lord of the Rings.

Someone will soon have the opportunity to do just that because the storied desk will soon be up for auction at Christie’s. Perhaps the new owner will consider the mid-Victorian roll-top too precious to use and will keep it as a shrine to the author.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s desk as Featured in Christie’s Auction

The desk was used by Tolkien from 1945-1959 when he was a professor of English language and literature at Merton College, University of Oxford, and later at his residence on Sandfield Road in Headington, Oxford. It is thought to be the desk he used while working on the final revisions for his epic fantasy. Photos of Tolkien sitting at the desk were taken by photographer Haywood Magee in 1955, shortly after the publication of The Lord of the Rings.

Continue reading “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Desk To Find a New Home”
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So… Netflix just bought Warner Bros. (Pending regulatory approval…) We all knew WB was up for sale, but Netflix coming out on top was a bit of a plot twist. [Press Release]

Like us, Ringers across the world are asking what this means for Middle-earth on film. Do the rights change? Does this affect ‘Hunt for Gollum?’ Will we be watching the Extended Editions on Netflix next week? We decided to put a little list together to help walk through the big questions fans are already asking and what we actually know.

Does Netflix now own Lord of the Rings?

Nope. That is unless they are buying Embracer… (Which they aren’t)

The core adaptation, merchandising, and related rights are with Embracer’s Middle‑earth Enterprises. WB has been the licensee making the films. Netflix is just buying the parent company that owns the studio which holds that license. Yes, that’s a big deal, but it doesn’t magically move the Tolkien IP to Netflix.

Think of it like Netflix now owns the workshop where Middle-earth movies get built, but not the blueprints.

Does this affect the movies Warner Bros/New Line already made?

Yes – but not in a scary way. The Peter Jackson trilogies, the Hobbit films, and the War of the Rohirrim anime all stay with the studio. Since Netflix is buying the studio, that whole library goes with it. So yes, Netflix now owns those. (Again, once the deal is complete)

Once contracts with other streaming services expire, Netflix will probably want LOTR on their own platform. It’s the Arkenstone, and Netflix likes shiny things.

Continue reading “Netflix Now Has The Ring?? The Top 10 Questions Inquiring Tolkien Fans Are Asking”
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