World first publication of a previously unknown short satirical fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and accompanied by illustrations from the author together with an essay, The Origin of Bovadium, by Richard Ovenden OBE.

As Christopher Tolkien notes in his Introduction, The Bovadium Fragments was a ‘satirical fantasy’ written by his father, which grew out of a planning...

World first publication of a previously unknown short satirical fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien, and accompanied by illustrations from the author together with an essay, The Origin of Bovadium, by Richard Ovenden OBE.

As Christopher Tolkien notes in his Introduction, The Bovadium Fragments was a ‘satirical fantasy’ written by his father, which grew out of a planning controversy that erupted in Oxford in the late 1940s, when J.R.R. Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.

Written initially for his own amusement, Tolkien’s tale was a private academic jest that poked gentle fun at such things as 'the pomposities of archaeologists' and 'the hideousness of college crockery'. However, it was at the same time expressing a barbed cri de coeur against the inexorable rise of motor transport and 'machine-worship' that was overwhelming the tranquillity of his beloved city.