Bodleian Magic

"The new display, ‘Magical Books: from the Middle Ages to Middle-earth’, focuses on five celebrated children’s fantasy authors. As well as Tolkien, it will include work by CS Lewis, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner and Philip Pullman.
     Delving into its collection of authors’ papers, the Bodleian display includes some of the original artwork for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, as well as the manuscript of The Fall of Arthur, a little known Tolkien poem that was unfinished when he died. It is published for the first time today [May 23, 2013] to coincide with the opening of the exhibition.
     Other 'magical' objects on show include Philip Pullman’s alethiometer (the golden compass from His Dark Materials trilogy), and one of Alan Garner’s original 'owl service' plates from the book of the same name."
— Jolyon Attwooll, The Telegraph
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"A new JRR Tolkien epic is being published today. The Oxford University professor wrote The Fall of Arthur in the 1930s, before he started work on The Hobbit.
     The story starts with the legendary King Arthur going to war in ‘Saxon lands’ before returning home.
     Its existence was revealed in the 1970s but its publication was then overtaken by other posthumous releases.
     Shaun Gunner, chairman of the Tolkien Society, said: 'We’re all used to seeing Tolkien’s stories set in Middle Earth, but this is the first time we’ve ever seen Tolkien write about legendary Britain.'"
— Oxford Mail
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Plots of Land

From: The Awl

"The map of the Hundred Acre Wood appears in the first Winnie-the-Pooh book entitled, wait for it, Winnie-the-Pooh. Created by E.H. Shepard (who also illustrated The Wind in The Willows), the map is meant to appear drawn by Christopher Robin, with 'Drawn by me and Mr Shepard helpd' written at the bottom and the cardinal directions on the compass marked as P-O-O-H. The storybook woods are based on the actual Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest, near Milne’s country home in Sussex."
—Victoria Johnson, The Awl
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From: fanpop

"Tolkien prepared several maps of Middle-earth and of the regions of Middle-earth where his stories took place. Some were published in his lifetime, though some of the earliest maps were not published until after his death. The main maps were those published in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales. Most of the events of the First Age took place in the subcontinent Beleriand, which was later engulfed by the ocean at the end of the First Age; the Blue Mountains at the right edge of the map of Beleriand are the same Blue Mountains that appear on the extreme left of the map of Middle-earth in the Second and Third Ages. Tolkien's map of Middle-earth, however, shows only a small part of the world; most of the lands of Rhûn and Harad are not shown on the map, and there are also other continents.
— Wikipedia
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