Tea at Trianon: Previously Unseen Lord of the Rings Material

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Previously Unseen Lord of the Rings Material

From CBR:

A wealth of unseen The Lord of the Rings material has been released from author JRR Tolkien's estate. As reported by The Guardian, the new material includes photographs, paintings depicting various locations in Middle-earth, as well as Tolkien's letters and draft manuscripts from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Tolkien estate's official website has been updated with the new material. Also among the new material are multiple audio recordings and videos featuring both Tolkien and his son Christopher, who passed away in 1973 and 2020, respectively. Among the audio recordings is the first recording of Gollum, as he was imagined by the author, when he first meets Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The Tolkien estate relaunched its website with this unseen material on Feb. 26, a significant date in Tolkien lore, as Feb. 26, 3019 is the date that the Fellowship of the Ring was broken, leaving Sam and Frodo to set out on their journey towards Mordor. (Read more.)

More HERE.

Our classic fairy-tales are far older than previously imagined. From Smithsonian:

A few hundred years ago, fairy tale auteurs like the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault helped bring magical tales of princesses, evil ogres, dark forests, weird spells and thwarted love into the storybooks—and to the bedsides—of children, everywhere. But how old are the tales they transcribed? A new study suggests that their origins go all the way back to prehistory.

In a new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, a folklorist and anthropologist say that stories like Rumpelstiltskin and Jack and the Beanstalk are much older than originally thought. Instead of dating from the 1500s, the researchers say that some of these classic stories are 4,000 and 5,000 years old, respectively. This contradicts previous speculation that story collectors like the Brothers Grimm were relaying tales that were only a few hundred years old. (Read more.)