Dr Hannah McDonald
@HannahAitch
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Secretary and Trustee of The @TolkienSociety | PhD in chemistry from @univofstandrews | Former @UW postdoc | Freelance science writer
Joined January 2018
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Tolkien’s pencil sketch of the geography of Mordor.
I love his attention to detail, with Mount Doom erupting and rivers of red running down to the plains of Gorgoroth.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
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The tower of
#Tolkien
books that I read/re-read this year. Hope everyone has a great 2023!
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Alan Lee’s illustrations capture Tolkien’s words so perfectly. This sketch of Éowyn facing the Witch-king is magnificent.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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“I split him open. I killed Sauron”
Anyone else think the cracked anvil could be the result of Adar’s attempt to kill Sauron? 👀
#TheRingsofPower
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The amount of work that Tolkien put into the timelines and chronologies for The Lord of the Rings is breathtaking. I think one of the reasons we love this work so much is because the care and love of the author shines through with every word.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
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My husband (who has no interest in
#Tolkien
) just admitted that he secretly listened to audiobooks of
#TheHobbit
,
#TheLordoftheRings
and
#TheSilmarillion
during 2023 so he could talk to me about my passion ❤️😭
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The John Howe paintings used on the covers of The History of Middle-earth paperbacks are absolutely gorgeous 😍 Such a pleasing collection of books!
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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Christopher Tolkien was born on this day in 1924. We owe him so much 📚 💚
#Tolkien
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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So excited about adding a matching edition of The Hobbit to these beauties later this year! 😍
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
#TheSilmarillion
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Happy Birthday to The Fellowship of the Ring! Published on this day in 1954!
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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I’m so excited about my
#Tolkien
Christmas haul! My husband knows me well. Had to include the awesome
@TolkienSociety
publications that arrived a few days ago too! The Christmas card was so beautiful that I had to put it in a frame!
#LOTR
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Tolkien’s rough sketch of the arm of Sauron stretching out across the land is so sinister…
#Tolkien
#Sauron
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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In Tolkien’s hands even an envelope becomes a work of art ✉️
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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In Tolkien’s epilogue to
#TheLordoftheRings
(published in volume 9 of The History of Middle-earth), Sam receives a letter from King Elessar inviting him and his family to meet the king on the borders of The Shire.
#Tolkien
created gorgeous facsimiles of the letter!
#LOTR
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One of my favourite editions of The Silmarillion. The Ted Nasmith illustrations are so beautiful and dramatic.
#Tolkien
#TheSilmarillion
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
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The tower of Tolkien books I read (or re-read) during 2023!
Wishing you all a wonderful 2024!
Thank you to everyone who has followed me, liked, reposted and commented on my tweets ☺️ ❤️
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
#TheSilmarillion
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Bought this Hobbit journal a long time ago but could never bring myself to write anything in it. The art inside is absolutely gorgeous.
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You can drink your fancy ales,
You can drink them by the flagon,
But the only brew for the brave and true,
Comes from the Green Dragon!
#Tolkien
#LordOfTheRings
#LOTR
#TheHobbit
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He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large one of the Country Round with all his favourite walks marked on it in red ink.
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
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Go grab a book because today is
#TolkienReadingDay
! 📚
Just taken part in the first
@TolkienSociety
reading day session and there were so many wonderful readings!
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#TheHobbit
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When I was a kid I used to read
@empiremagazine
religiously every month and scour it for news about the
#LOTR
movies. Feels very nostalgic to pick it up again! I kept my old special editions - sadly I don’t have a FOTR issue because I didn’t know about the magazine in 2001!
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The Alan Lee illustrated edition of The Lord of the Rings is one of my absolute favourites. It’s so beautiful 📚❤️
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
10
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Alan Lee’s illustration of The Mines of Moria is absolute dwarvish perfection
#TolkienTuesday
#TolkienTrewsday
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
8
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The three deluxe “illustrated by the author” volumes look really impressive together.
@HarperCollinsUK
did an amazing job with these books! They are seriously beautiful 📚
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheSilmarillion
#booktwt
7
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Here’s the book pitch: The Complete Poetry of J. R. R. Tolkien. And it would contain EVERYTHING. All the early poems, everything he wrote during WW1, the Lays, poems from
#TheHobbit
,
#LOTR
, etc. with commentary and early drafts.
Why doesn’t this exist?!
#Tolkien
#LordoftheRings
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Is there a specific name for the illness that causes you to keep buying new
#Tolkien
books even though you already have a mountain of books waiting to be read? 😅 My latest acquisitions!
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Beginning to end this chapter is phenomenal! It’s impossible to read those final paragraphs when the cock crows and the horns of Rohan are heard without crying.
Background is a print of “The Siege of Gondor” by Alan Lee.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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These books are an absolute gold mine of Tolkien information! The amount of work and dedication that Scull and Hammond put into them is just mind-blowing!
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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I’m still completely in awe of all the amazing snippets of information we were given in The Nature of Middle-earth. I mean,
#Tolkien
considered atoms, molecules and the concept of isotopes in his metaphysical writings, and had Quenya terms for them!
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
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Found a peaceful place to read my book. Lovely to have the echo of the Music of the Ainur as background noise 😆
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
9
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One of my favourite animal moments in Tolkien’s writing is when the swans lead Tuor to Vinyamar. I love the image of them each presenting him with a feather and bowing down before him🪶
Image by the awesome Ted Nasmith
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
#Tolkien
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This is my favourite edition of Unfinished Tales! It’s the 40th anniversary deluxe edition with beautiful illustrations from Alan Lee, John Howe AND Ted Nasmith! What a superstar lineup!
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#UnfinishedTales
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Glory and trumpets! It was my birthday recently and I have added some amazing things to my
#Tolkien
#collection
Can’t wait to get into these books and to get the wonderful Jay Johnstone art up on the wall!
#LotR
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The facsimile first edition of The Hobbit is a real treasure! So fascinating to see the changes Tolkien made to the text, especially Riddles in the Dark, to bring it into accord with The Lord of the Rings. Be kind as Christmas everyone!
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
#LOTR
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The first time I read The Lord of the Rings it was summer and I was 12 years old. Every year when the weather gets warmer I get the urge to go right back to The Long-Expected Party! Wonder which edition I’ll read this year… 🤔📚
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
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One of Tolkien’s most fascinating maps is Fimbulfambi’s map from the Pryftan Fragment - the earliest version of The Hobbit. The compass rose shows the Big Dipper (N), the sun (S), the Gates of Morn (E) and Taniquetil (W)!
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
#Tolkien
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“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!”
-The Hobbit, Chapter XVIII
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
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Peter Jackson really missed a trick by not using Tolkien’s own design for the crown of Gondor. This clearly looks exquisite.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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I have just finished reading Tolkien and the Great War by
@JohnGarthWriter
and it is the best biographical work on
#Tolkien
that I’ve ever read. Beautifully written and meticulously researched. Highly recommend!
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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For this spooky
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
I’m sharing John Howe’s illustration of the Barrow-wight
‘Where are you?’ he cried again, both angry and afraid.
‘Here!’ said a voice, deep and cold, that seemed to come out of the ground. ‘I am waiting for you!’
#Tolkien
#LOTR
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Autumn really is the perfect time to read The Lord of the Rings! 🍁🍂📚♥️
#Tolkien
#LordoftheRings
#LOTR
#TheHobbit
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I knew it was coming. I tried to be prepared. But wow. I would never have been ready for this Alan Lee 😭
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#Celebrimbor
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FYI new edition of The Hobbit is absolutely stunning 😍 📚 So happy right now!
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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The more I read
#Tolkien
’s letters, the more I am convinced that we wouldn’t have
#LordoftheRings
if it wasn’t for Christopher.
“This book has come to be more and more addressed to you, so that your opinion matters more than any one else's.”
-Letter 78 to CJRT
#LOTR
#TheHobbit
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Out of the wreck rose the Black Rider, tall and threatening, towering above her. With a cry of hatred that stung the very ears like venom he let fall his mace.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley.
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
#Rivendell
#LOTR
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About to start one of my all time favourite chapters! Let’s do this!
“Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song – if any be left to sing of us hereafter.”
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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One of my favourite quotes in The Silm 👇
“And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”
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Every time I read
#LordoftheRings
I notice something new. This time a beautiful moment jumped out at me. When Bilbo leaves Bag End, he pauses and bows to his beloved hobbit hole.
“Good-bye!’ he said, looking at his old home and bowing to the door.”
#Tolkien
#LOTR
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Visiting friends today and discovered a first edition of The Silmarillion on the bookshelf! Lovely to have a look (even if it looks like a mouse might have nibbled the cover 😅) 📚
#BookLoversDay
#Tolkien
#TheSilmarillion
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The 2023 deluxe edition of The Hobbit comes with a little “Mathoms” book. It includes Tolkien’s lecture on dragons, which he originally delivered to an audience of children in the University Museum, Oxford.
#Tolkien
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
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And it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea
#Tolkien
#TheSilmarillion
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
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On this day in 2020 we lost Christopher Tolkien.
“Of the world of Tolkien, the founding books had been published
They prospered like tall trees, but it is you who revealed the forest”
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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Sharing Tolkien’s sketch of Edith playing the piano for
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
. This is a small part of a larger drawing from 1918 called “High life at Gypsy Green”.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
#TheHobbit
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“Upon it sat a man so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf; but his white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids from beneath a thin golden circlet set upon his brow.”
-The King of the Golden Hall
Art by the amazing Alan Lee
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this-
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea-
that Lúthien for a time should be.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#TheSilmarillion
#TheHobbit
#LordOfTheRings
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“It is written in my life-blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can no other.”
-J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter 109 ❤️
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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I bought this stunning print of Gandalf the White by Jay Johnstone when I was at Oxonmoot. Really need to get it framed!!
#Tolkien
#Gandalf
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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The Annotated Hobbit is an absolute treasure trove of fascinating information! Can’t wait to do a cover to cover read.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#TheHobbit
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Just finished re-reading Unfinished Tales! Haven’t read it for a couple of years and I forgot how much good stuff there is in this book!
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
#TheHobbit
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Slowly working my way through Tolkien’s scholarly works. I’m appreciating and understanding more about Tolkien the Writer as I learn more about Tolkien the Professor
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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I’m always so tempted to get one of the beautiful 3-volume sets of the History of Middle-earth. But I do think there’s something very pleasing about the full set of paperbacks on my shelf
#Tolkien
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I am interested in connecting with
#Tolkien
people in the “other place” where the grass is green and the skies are blue… If anyone has a spare invite I’d appreciate it! I’m seeing less and less Tolkien content and engagement here and it’s really sad ☹️
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John Howe’s Tolkien illustrations are some of my favourites, especially this one of Gandalf. I was so excited to briefly meet him at the Rings of Power London Premiere and get his autograph!
#Tolkien
#LordOfTheRings
#LOTR
#ROP
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If you’re feeling
#Tolkien
withdrawal after an absolutely amazing
#Oxonmoot
then join me tomorrow evening when I will be I chatting to
@Prof_Nick_Groom
about “Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century”. The event is online and it’s free! Details below!
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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My husband ordered this for me as a spontaneous gift ❤️ So excited to start reading the restored and expanded letters
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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Just finished the first class in Verlyn Flieger’s Silmarillion course with
@PoliticsProse
and I am inspired!!! No better way to spend a Sunday evening! I can’t wait until next week!
#Tolkien
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This book is absolutely amazing. The analysis by Doug Adams is phenomenal and there are so many connections and insights that I’d never have discovered without this book. Really makes you appreciate the complete genius of Howard Shore!
#Tolkien
#LordoftheRings
#LOTR
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The History of The Hobbit is a phenomenal work of scholarship and such an interesting read. Although the story of little dog Turpie and the Hobyahs was traumatic. If you know, you know.
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
#LOTR
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The Atlas of Middle-earth is such a valuable resource! So helpful when you are trying to visualise things in Tolkien’s work. I’ve really enjoyed consulting it during this re-read of The Lord of the Rings.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
#TheHobbit
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Tolkien’s essays “On Fairy-stories” and “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” perfectly balance the light and the dark, there and back again, happy endings and the long defeat. Both are essential reading 📚
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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Now that I’m very slowly starting to get to grips with the role, I’m so excited to say that I’ve joined the
@TolkienSociety
committee as Secretary and Trustee. I’m really looking forward to making a meaningful contribution to the wonderful
#Tolkien
community!
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Beneath this unassuming cover is the most phenomenal all-star lineup of Tolkien scholarship
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
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Excitedly bought this book after reading
#LordOfTheRings
for the first time (over 20 years ago). Discovered it was fiendishly complicated. Book has been ornamental on my bookcase ever since 😅
#LOTR
#Tolkien
8
23
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“and the charm of the fragments is often largely in being unfinished”
-Sauron Defeated
The more I learn about Tolkien and his writing as I go through The History of Middle-earth, the more surprised I am that he ever finished The Lord of the Rings!
#Tolkien
#LordOfTheRings
#LOTR
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A favourite recent addition to my
#Tolkien
collection is Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien. It’s an absolutely gorgeous book and shows what an exquisite artist Tolkien was. Plus there’s some art in here that I’d never seen before!
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
6
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I’m lost in the woods of Taur-nu-Fuin and it’s dark and dreadful
No wait… this is Mirkwood. I’m lost in Mirkwood and can’t find my way out
Hold on. Fangorn. Definitely Fangorn. I’m lost in Fangorn and it’s frightfully tree-ish
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
6
15
166
Happy Hobbit Day everyone! Don’t forget to drink to the health of Bilbo and Frodo, ideally with a lovely glass of Old Winyards! 🍷
#HobbitDay
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
4
20
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Thinking about the dwarves discussing “historical, dubious, and mythical” dragon-slayings in The Hobbit and realising they are talking about Túrin and Glaurung, Eärendil and Ancalagon, and probably the fall of Gondolin 🐉
#Tolkien
#TheHobbit
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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This book was my gateway into Middle-earth. Every time I pick it up it immediately evokes the memory of being 12 years old and reading
#LordoftheRings
for the very first time. It was my dad’s book and he recently gifted it to me ❤️
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
#Tolkien
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12
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I’ve just finished reading The Nature of Middle-earth edited by
@CarlHostetter
! So much amazing information! It was a brilliant read. That footnote towards the end of the book about Baldor in the Paths of the Dead will stick with me - tragic and horrifying!
#Tolkien
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My 4 year old found one of my Middle-earth maps and wanted to know all about it. She had a LOT of questions about Sauron, including:
Does Sauron watch TV?
How many beds does Sauron have in his tower?
Is Sauron yucky?
Does Sauron dance?
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordoftheRings
#Sauron
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As we’re coming towards the end of the year I’ve been reflecting on the wonderful Tolkien-related things that have happened in 2023. So I thought I’d start a thread with the highlights! I’ll update through December!
#MyYearInTolkien
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
#TheHobbit
3
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For the
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
theme of “other works” I’m sharing the delectable smorgasbord that is Tree and Leaf. Poem, essay, short story, verse drama. It has it all. Go read it immediately.
#Tolkien
#LOTR
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‘You have conquered. Few have gained such a victory. Be at peace! Minas Tirith shall not fall!’
Image is The Falls of Rauros by Jay Johnstone, from the centrefold of Amon Hen 300.
#TolkienTrewsday
#TolkienTuesday
#Tolkien
#LOTR
#LordOfTheRings
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