For the last week and a half, I have been reviewing and putting in book-like format a series of blog posts I did at Daily Kos 1 ½ years ago on different takes on Tolkien, and in particular on Lord of the Rings. This morning, as I was editing one of these posts, it occurred to me that no one had ever tried looked at what Tolkien had said about which characters and species in Middle-Earth had beards (including Dwarven females), and which did not. I imagined calling it “Barbering in Middle Earth.”
Just now, I happened upon a news release about a new “treasure
trove” of Tolkien’s writings on Middle Earth, due for publication in June of
2021. Near the end, it notes that “[t]he new
collection will even touch upon which characters had beards”.
That is
… eerie.
