Oxonmoot is a conference and fan convention organized by The Tolkien Society devoted to celebrate and study the life and works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It takes place every year in Oxford, England, around 22 September, the date of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins's birthdays, also known as Hobbit Day. [1]
The idea of a Tolkien-related gathering in Oxford came from the multiple connections of the writer with the city, and was initially suggested by John Abbot in the fanzine Nazgul. The first Oxonmoot took place over 13 to 15 September 1974, and was based in the former Welsh Pony pub in George Street. Among other activities such as visiting the Bodleian Library and lunching in The Eagle and Child pub, attendants of this first meeting laid a wreath on Tolkien's grave, and recited A Elbereth Gilthoniel . [2] During this first Oxonmoot an American student and member of the Mythopoeic Society joined the original group. [2] The 1992 Oxonmoot, at the centenary of Tolkien's birth, was held together with the 23rd Mythopoeic Conference. [3] From 1991 Oxonmoot has been hosted in different colleges of the University of Oxford, for example, Lady Margaret Hall from 2009 to 2014, [4] [5] and St Antony's College from 2015 to 2019. [6] [7] [8]
Oxonmoot has become the largest of the Tolkien Society's calendar of events, typically bringing about 200 fans from the UK and abroad. [9] The 2018 Oxonmoot was the largest with more than 300 attendees, coinciding with the popular Bodleian exhibition Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth. [10]
Oxonmoot takes place over a weekend and includes talks, art shows, reading circles, theatre performances, [11] workshops, and social events such as quizzes, a banquet and a masquerade. [12] The event closes with a remembrance ceremony called Enyalië at Tolkien's grave in Wolvercote cemetery. [13] The Enyalië continues the tradition established during the first Oxonmoot of laying a wreath on the grave of Tolkien and his wife Edith, and includes words by the Chairman of the Tolkien Society, a selected reading from Tolkien, and a recital of the poem Namárië . [14]
Oxonmoot is a forum for presenting Tolkien research [15] in the form of seminar papers and books, [16] from academics such as John Garth, Tom Shippey, Verlyn Flieger, Michael D. C. Drout, and Elizabeth Solopova. [17]
Due to the COVID pandemic, the 2020 Oxonmoot was held online, [18] and it included keynote talks by Dimitra Fimi about the Unfinished Tales, and Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull about Tolkien as an illustrator. [19]
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Treebeard, or Fangorn in Sindarin, is a tree-giant character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He is an Ent and is said by Gandalf to be "the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth." He lives in the ancient Forest of Fangorn, to which he has given his name. It lies at the southern end of the Misty Mountains. He is described as being about 14 feet in height, and in appearance similar to a beech or an oak.
The History of Middle-earth is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US. They collect and analyse much of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by his son Christopher Tolkien. The series shows the development over time of Tolkien's conception of Middle-earth as a fictional place with its own peoples, languages, and history, from his earliest notions of "a mythology for England" through to the development of the stories that make up The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. It is not a "history of Middle-earth" in the sense of being a chronicle of events in Middle-earth written from an in-universe perspective; it is instead an out-of-universe history of Tolkien's creative process. In 2000, the twelve volumes were republished in three limited edition omnibus volumes. Non-deluxe editions of the three volumes were published in 2002.
Thomas Alan Shippey is a British medievalist, a retired scholar of Middle and Old English literature as well as of modern fantasy and science fiction. He is considered one of the world's leading academic experts on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien about whom he has written several books and many scholarly papers. His book The Road to Middle-Earth has been called "the single best thing written on Tolkien".
The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given annually for outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas. Established by the Mythopoeic Society in 1971, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award is given for "fiction in the spirit of the Inklings", and the Scholarship Award for non-fiction work. The award is a statuette of a seated lion, with a plaque on the base. It has drawn resemblance to, and is often called, the "Aslan".
The works of J. R. R. Tolkien have served as the inspiration to painters, musicians, film-makers and writers, to such an extent that he is sometimes seen as the "father" of the entire genre of high fantasy.
Do not laugh! But once upon a time I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic to the level of romantic fairy-story... The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.
The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship is a "Special Interest Group" of the Mythopoeic Society devoted to the study of J. R. R. Tolkien's constructed languages, headed by the computer scientist Carl F. Hostetter. It was founded by Jorge Quiñónez in 1988.
The works of J. R. R. Tolkien have generated a body of research covering many aspects of his fantasy writings. These encompass The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, along with his legendarium that remained unpublished until after his death, and his constructed languages, especially the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin. Scholars from different disciplines have examined the linguistic and literary origins of Middle-earth, and have explored many aspects of his writings from Christianity to feminism and race.
Wayne Gordon Hammond is an American scholar known for his research and writings on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. He has won five Mythopoeic Awards.
Christina Scull is a British researcher and writer best known for her books about the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, in collaboration with her husband Wayne G. Hammond who is also a Tolkien scholar. They have jointly won Mythopoeic Scholarship Awards for Inklings Studies five times.
Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings, and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps, and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a mythology for England. The earliest story, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star", is from 1914; he revised and rewrote the legendarium stories for most of his adult life.
The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology is a scholarly study of the Middle-earth works of J. R. R. Tolkien written by Tom Shippey and first published in 1982. The book discusses Tolkien's philology, and then examines in turn the origins of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and his minor works. An appendix discusses Tolkien's many sources. Two further editions extended and updated the work, including a discussion of Peter Jackson's film version of The Lord of the Rings.
Janet Brennan Croft is an American librarian and Tolkien scholar, known for her authored and edited books and journals on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy. She won a Mythopoeic Award in 2005.
The Annotated Hobbit: The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is an edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit with a commentary by Douglas A. Anderson. It was first published in 1988 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first American publication of The Hobbit, and by Unwin Hyman of London.
The Tolkien Society is an educational charity and literary society devoted to the study and promotion of the life and works of the author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien.
Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth is a 2018 art book exploring images of the artwork, illustrations, maps, letters and manuscripts of J. R. R. Tolkien. The book was written by Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien archivist at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was timed to coincide with an exhibition of the same name, also curated by McIlwaine.
Glen GoodKnight (1941–2010) was the founder of the Mythopoeic Society and the editor of its journal, Mythlore between 1970 and 1998; in that time the publication grew from being a fan magazine to a peer-reviewed academic journal. He was an expert on and collector of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and his fellow Inklings, C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams.
John Garth is a British journalist and author, known especially for writings about J. R. R. Tolkien including his biography Tolkien and the Great War and a book on the places that inspired Middle-earth, The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien. He won a 2004 Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship for his work on Tolkien. The biography influenced much Tolkien scholarship in the subsequent decades.
The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth is a 2020 non-fiction book by the journalist and Tolkien scholar John Garth. It describes the places that most likely inspired J. R. R. Tolkien to invent Middle-earth, as portrayed in his fantasy books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Those places include many that Tolkien lived in or visited in his early life, as well as sites from history and literature. Most are real, for instance with England as the counterpart of the Shire, though some, like Atlantis, are mythical, and others, like Mirkwood, probably have roots in real places. He notes the ambiguities in some of the connections, and that others have made superficial comparisons, such as of Tolkien's towers with various modern towers in Birmingham, where Tolkien lived as a child. Garth presents his theories of the likely origins of some of these places, supporting these with maps and photographs.
