Tolkien’s Koala: From Bingo to Frodo

Abstract: The lead hobbit character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy of 1954-5 was originally named Bingo Baggins after Bingo Bear, a toy Australian koala owned by the author’s daughter Priscilla and often referred to at the time as a koala bear. Tolkien, during the course of writing The Lord of the Rings, went on to change the lead from Bingo Baggins, son of Bilbo Baggins, to Frodo Baggins, his nephew. Bears were to feature throughout Tolkien’s juvenile and adult fiction, though the marsupial koala was not. A group of teddy bears and koalas known as the Bingos were treasured toys within the Tolkien household during the 1920s and 1930s.

English author J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for his fictional work The Hobbit and its epic sequel The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien 1937, 1954-5). The author’s Middle-earth legendarium - populated by orcs, elves, hobbits, men, dwarves and mystical beings such as Tom Bombadil, Galadriel and the wizard Gandalf - is connected to, though far removed from, the everyday childhood fantasy world and play time of fairies, little people and talking animals. With much of Tolkien’s early writing during the 1920s and 1930s stimulated by his four young children – Christopher, John, Michael and Priscilla - the stories he told, or read to them, often featured such creatures. Toys were played with and common about the house. From the first decade of the twentieth century, real life animals such as American and European bears and Australian marsupial koalas were often transformed into what are commonly – though in some instances wrongly - referred to as teddy bears. With children and family such an important part of his life, Tolkien’s adult fiction was occasionally developed from play and story telling. Most notably, The Hobbit was originally written for a young audience, and the Tom Bombadil character in The Lord of the Rings was based, in part, on a Dutch doll used by the Tolkien children (Reynolds 1991). Surprisingly, there is also a connection between The Lord of the Rings and Australian toy koalas which became part of the Tolkien family collection during the 1930s.

Links are not generally made between Tolkien’s writing and Australia. The nearest thing in recent time has been film director Peter Jackson’s recreation of Middle-earth in an Antipodean (New Zealand) setting for his The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series of films released between 2001-2014 (Bogstad and Kaveny 2011, Organ 2013).

Connections between the former British colonies – Australia and New Zealand - and seat of Empire (Great Britain) are historically common, as was interest in local animals such as the kangaroo, koala and kiwi. For example, the wombat owned by Pre-Raphaelite artist, writer and amateur zoologist Dante Gabriele Rossetti, is a famous Australian marsupial resident in England for a brief period during the late 1860s. The unfortunate animal, though dearly loved, met with an untimely death and was subsequently immortalised in Rossetti’s drawings, writings and, more recently, its own book (Simons 2008). Another expatriate Australian native animal in the mould of Rossetti’s wombat - though this time inanimate - is Tolkien’s koala, or rather, the family of assorted teddy bears and toy koalas collected by Priscilla Tolkien and known as the Bingos. These cute and cuddly stuffed animals - with the father going by the name ‘Billy’ – also had links to the hobbit Frodo Baggins, central character and ring bearer in The Lord of the Rings.

-----------------------

A Koala from Australia

The story of Tolkien’s koala and its role in the development of The Lord of the Rings begins on 23 December 1934. Two days before Christmas the author received in the mail a number of gift parcels from Professor George Herbert Cowling, a former University of Leeds colleague then resident in Australia (Tolkien Gateway 2018). Since 1928 Cowling had served as Professor of English Literature at the University of Melbourne. The Tolkien and Cowling families maintained close links, evan after the latter’s immigration to Australia. Amongst the packages despatched that December by Cowling from Canada, India and Australia was a book on the Middle-English author Geoffrey Chaucer – Tolkien was, at the time, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University - and a toy koala. The latter was a gift for the author’s then five year old daughter Priscilla.

Why would Cowling send such an gift to England? The answer perhaps lies in the young family’s ongoing interest in, and fondness for, such toys. The link between the koala and the so-called teddy bear may also have been a factor. As in England, teddy bears had proven popular in Australia since the early 1900s when they were first manufactured in Germany and America. However, following the restrictions of World War I and cessation of exports from Germany, Australian toy manufacturers were forced to produce their own versions of the teddy bear. By the end of the 1920s these were becoming distinctly local, and production of teddy bear-like toy koalas was commenced by firms such as Joy Toys (Whyte 2010). Photographs from the early 1930s exist of children and members of the Australian community engaging with such items. For example, the State Library of New South Wales collection contains two photographs of toy koalas by Sam Hood dated around 1934, the same year Cowling sent his gift to Priscilla. One of these photographs is of a similarly aged young girl on Bondi beach holding a stuffed toy koala doll.

Young girl with koala toy on Bondi beach, circa 1934. Photographer: Sam Hood. Collection: State Library of New South Wales.

Another is of female athlete Billy Samuels with a koala mascot mounted on the handle bars of her bicycle as she departs Sydney in an attempt to set a record for an overland ride to Melbourne (Edwards 2017).

Billie Samuels on a Malvern Star bicycle at the start of her ride from Sydney to Melbourne, 22 May 1934. Note the koala toy as a mascot. Photographer: Sam Hood. Collection: State Library of New South Wales.

The typical toy koala is distinguished from the teddy bear by its smaller body and height, large semi-circular ears, round puffy face, flat nose and small claw-like limbs. During that period such toys generally comprised a mohair wool and cloth outer skin, wood wool stuffing and glass eyes. Professor Cowling’s gift – which was most probably made in Australia - was likely similar to the koala toy seen in the Hood photographs. As Tolkien happened to be in the process of writing a letter to Cowling at the time the parcels were received, he immediately added a footnote thanking his friend for the gifts and noting:

Priscilla is fascinated by the Koala, which is just like her favourite toy Bingo come to miraculous life.

Who, and what, was Bingo? The answer lies with a toy which first appeared in England six years previous. Bingo was a miniature, 4 to 5 1/2 inch tall, white coloured, stuffed ‘Koala Teddy Bear’ manufactured and released by Jungle Toys in 1928.

Bingo Bear, Koala Teddy Bear, Jungle Toys, London, c.1928 (above and below). Originally issued with a silver or green label bearing the text: Jungle Toys / Bingo / Reg. No.728035 / Made in England.

Designed by Miss E.M. Daniels, ‘Bingo Bear’ was launched at a time when the koala was commonly referred to as a member of the bear family, though it was in fact a marsupial, aligned to the Australian wombat, kangaroo and Tasmanian devil (Organ 2006, Moyal and Organ 2008). Since its first scientific discovery by Europeans in the early 1800s, the animal had often been referred to as a ‘koala bear’, such were its superficial similarities to a small bear or sloth. This was despite the fact that there were no species of bear native to Australia. The misnomer eventually saw rejection in the animal’s native country, though it continued to be applied elsewhere. For example, a popular Australian children’s chocolate released in 1966 was the Caramello Bear, in the shape of a koala (Wikipedia). The confection was renamed the Caramello Koala during the early 2000s, though the bear name was still used in countries such as South Africa. The connection with the bear species remains problematic, with many people still referring to the animal as a koala bear. This problem was highlighted in a 2016 Australian children’s book on the subject featuring a koala and entitled Don’t Call Me Bear! (Blabey 2016).

Similarities between Miss Daniels' English Bingo and Australian koala toys of the period are obvious, with both produced in the teddy bear tradition, placing an emphasis on being ‘cute and cuddly’. There are physical differences, however, in the fact of the small head of the English version, such that it looks more like a small German teddy bear than an Australian koala. The use of the label ‘Koala Teddy Bear’ by Jungle Toys is understandable as a marketing aid, as is the ongoing confusion over the nature of the animal.

The specific application of the name Bingo to a toy teddy bear appears to date from the Jungle Toys item. Another use of the name for a children’s character is seen in Bingo the Brainy Pup who was a friend of Rupert Bear. Both featured in a comic strip created by English artist Mary Tourtel which first appeared in the London Daily Express newspaper on 8 November 1920. That strip also included Ming the Dragon and a human character known as the Professor, both elements immediately bringing to mind the author of The Hobbit and that text which features the dragon Smaug.

The Christmas 1934 arrival in the Tolkien household of the toy Australian animal obviously intrigued the young Priscilla, who may, or may not, have been aware of the relationship between the koala gift from Professor Cowling and her favourite toy, Bingo, the ‘Koala Teddy Bear’. The teddy bear label would undoubtedly have led to some confusion. Teddy bears had become an increasingly common feature of an English child’s toy box since the first such bear was produced in Germany by Richard Steiff during 1902. It was also manufactured shortly thereafter in America by Rose and Morris Michtom (Picot 1987, Maniera 2001). The toy's popularity was almost immediate, along with allocation of the name ‘Teddy Bear’ following on a famously lampooned hunting incident in 1902 involving then United States President and keen bear hunter Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt. Apparently whilst on a hunt, the president was finding it difficult to locate and shoot a bear. His friends were more successful. They captured and tethered an elderly one, which they then presented to him for the final kill. Roosevelt rejected their offer as unsportsmanlike, preferring to capture one of his own accord. The bear was subsequently killed by a blow to the head.

Clifford Berryman, Drawing the Line in Mississippi, Washington Post, 16 November 1902.

The title of the cartoon illustrated above – Drawing the Line in Mississippi – was a double entendre on the president’s criticisms of lynchings in the South and his treatment of the captive bear. American entrepreneurs the Michtoms decided to create a stuffed toy bear as a result of the publicity and, after securing permission from Roosevelt, initially called it 'Teddy's Bear', though it quickly came to be known as a ‘teddy bear’ (Ross 2017). The Michtoms went on – like Steiff – to develop a profitable business out of the venture.

The teddy bear remains, of course, much loved to this day, despite modern competition from dolls and toys such as Barbies, Bratz and Beanie Boos. Likewise, the Australian koala continues to be seen as a living embodiment of the teddy bear, with its finer features still popular amongst children and adults alike, both as a toy and in real life.

---------------------------

Letters from Father Christmas

After Tolkien received the koala toy from Cowling, the following day – Christmas Eve - he wrote a letter to his children from Father Christmas. This had become a family tradition since 1920, with the letters sending messages of goodwill from the North Pole and featuring a host of characters including the Great Polar Bear Karhu, his friends Paksu and Valkotukka, polar cubs, snowboys, elves and goblins (Tolkien 2004). The content of the illustrated letters reflected aspects of Tolkien’s life and personal feelings, though these were presented through Father Christmas and aimed at connecting with his children. This is seen, for example, in the 1934 Christmas letter he wrote to Priscilla, with what is likely a reference to the Bingo 'koala teddy bear' toy:

Polar Bear sends his love. He is glad you have called your bear Bingo: he thinks it is a jolly name, but he thinks that bears ought to be white all over. (Letters from Father Christmas (FC 118)

This suggests that Priscilla may have applied the name Bingo to the toy koala gift from Professor Cowling. The latter was likely of a dark grey colour, as opposed to the ‘white all over’ of the Jungle Toys Bingo and the native polar bear. Tolkien also revealed a likeness for the name Bingo at this point, and over the years between 1934 and 1941 his Christmas letters made frequent use of it in reference to what is most likely both the koala received from the Cowling family and Priscilla’s family of bears, including Bingo the koala bear. This latter group became more generally known as the Bingos, or at least the two referred to above. For example, in 1935 Tolkien, as Father Christmas, wrote:

Polar Bear sends his love to the Bingos and to Orange Teddy and Jubilee. (127)

And in the Christmas letter of 1937 he inquired:

How are the Bingos? (FC 145)

This was around the same time as he commenced writing the first chapter of the sequel to The Hobbit, which was to become The Lord of the Rings. Titled ‘A Long Expected Party’, it dealt with the birthday celebrations of the main hobbit character, Bilbo Baggins. The Hobbit had been published in September of 1937, ostensibly as a children’s book. Due to its immediate popularity, Tolkien commenced work on the sequel just before Christmas, carrying on through into 1938. At the end of that year, in response to a letter from Priscilla, Father Christmas wrote:

Give my love to your Bingos and all the other sixty (or more!), especially Raggles and Preddley and Tinker and Tailor and Jubilee and Snowball. (FC 148)

Priscilla was obviously especially fond of her bears and stuffed toys, and acquired such a large collection that on family holidays she and her mother Edith would catch the train to the coast, while the two boys Christopher and Michael would cycle, and their father,

…. would drive Jo 2 [the family car], weighed down with luggage, squeezing in himself at the last possible moment. He would be surrounded by large numbers of Priscilla’s soft toys, which she insisted she would share the holiday with. On one trip someone asked him if he was a travelling salesman dealing in teddy bears. (Family Album 64)

Two photographs from March 1930 exist of the young Tolkien family in their backyard having afternoon tea. A number of teddy bears can be seen sharing in the festivities, with each of the boys holding one. This was shortly after the birth of Priscilla.

The Tolkien family in their backyard, having afternoon tea with teddy bears. Taken at 20 Northmoor Road in March 1930.

The Tolkien family – Edith and the four children (baby Priscilla on her lap) - with their Icelandic au pair Arndís Þorbjarnardóttir (Mueller-Harder 2012).

Bears featured throughout Tolkien’s juvenile writing, most noticeably in the form of the polar bears in the Christmas letters and the family of mischievous bears in his 1930s era illustrated children’s book Mr Bliss (Tolkien 1984). The latter was a simple adventure story based around the author’s three sons and their toy bears. Another fictional bear was Boern, the shape-shifting man / black bear in The Hobbit, though this was a decidedly darker character than the white North Pole bears and teddy bears of story time and play.

By Christmas 1939 Britain was consumed by war and this was reflected, both directly and indirectly, in the remaining Father Christmas letters, all of which were addressed to Priscilla alone. Tolkien’s drafting of The Lord of the Rings had also developed a darker and more sombre tone. He wrote that year:

I hope your Bingo family will have a jolly Christmas, and behave themselves. Tell Billy – is not that the father’s name? – not to be so cross. They are not to quarrel over the crackers I am sending. .... [Polar Bear] still he sends love to you and all your bears. “Why don’t you have Polar Cubs instead of Bingos and Koalas?” he says. (FC 162, 167)

This letter introduces us to Billy Bingo. The name Billy was perhaps chosen in deference to Blinky Bill, the famous Australian koala featured in a series of popular children’s stories written and illustrated by Dorothy Wall (Wall 1933). It also suggests that Priscilla, by this time, had more than one toy koala in her collection.

A feature of Tolkien’s Christmas letters was the accompanying artwork, variously in the form of calligraphy, illustrations to the text, separate panels depicting events mentioned in the letters, and the drawing of North Pole postage stamps on the covers. The 1939 letter, for example, featured a full page coloured drawing of Father Christmas and Polar Bear amongst tall trees, capped with sparking star lights (FC 166). The letters were a significant element in the work of Tolkien the artist and in many ways reflect his development in that area over an extensive period. His artistic skill was more publically expressed in colour illustrations for The Hobbit and dust jacket designs for both it and The Lord of the Rings.

By 1940, with the war drawing ever closer to mainland England and Tolkien’s sons serving, his Christmas letters introduce the idea of battles at the North Pole, with the spreading of the untrue rumour of Polar Bear and polar cubs being blown up and Father Christmas captured by goblins (FC 172). In October-November 1941 there was an attack by goblins on the North Pole, though it was successfully fought off by Father Christmas, Polar Bear, polar cubs, snow boys and elves, with the copious use of explosive and gunpowder assisting their cause (FC 174-81). Tolkien had served as a communications officer on the Western Front, France, in World War One (Garth 2005). During that time he lost close friends, experienced the horror of warfare on fields of France, and caught the Trench Fever which led to his repatriation from the battlefield and a lifelong debilitation. As a frontline communications officer, Tolkien made use of a variety of devices in the provision of information to the troops in the field, including pigeons, fireworks for signals, written and typed memos, and telephony. He also carried through into later life a fondness for fireworks, a manifestation of which was described in a letter to his brother Hilary during 1971:

As for Bonfire Night – that was a great Festival with us when the children were young. But I hit on the excuse for making it a ‘continuous birthday’ jamboree for the boys (Oct 22, Nov 16, 21) and also carrying on of the ancient Incoming of Winter Festival, so that no shadow of the abominable business of 1605 was allowed to fall on it. (Letters II 63)

In this letter Tolkien is referring to the famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in which a group of dissident Catholics – including Guy Fawkes – attempted to assassinate King James I and blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. Tolkien also expressed his love of festivity and fireworks through the character Gandalf the wizard in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, with his pyrotechnical skills evident during Bilbo Baggins’ 111^th birthday celebrations and featuring at the beginning of the Peter Jackson film version of the latter. In the Christmas 1941 letter Tolkien further wrote on behalf of Father Christmas:

I like to hear about your Bear Bingo, but really I think he is too old and important to hang up stockings! But Polar Bear seems to feel that any kind of bear is a relation. And he said to me, “Leave it to me, old man (that, I am afraid, is what he often calls me): I will pack a perfectly beautiful selection for his Poliness (yes, Poliness!)”. So I shall try and bring the “beautiful selection” along: what it is I don’t know! (FC 180-1).

Tolkien’s subsequent letters continued to make reference to the war at the North Pole, though the goblin attacks had ceased. In the Christmas 1942 letter Polar Bear makes a light-hearted reference to gunpowder and his comrade Billy Bingo, or ‘Silly Billy’ as he later calls him, as follows:

...Polar Bear has spent lots of time this year making fresh gunpowder – just in case of trouble. He said, “wouldn’t that grubby little Billy like being here!” I don’t know what he was talking about, unless it was about your bear: does he eat gunpowder?” (FC 186)

In addition, Polar Bear added, somewhat cryptically:

You’ll find out about the pantry! Ha! Ha! I know wot you like. Don’t let that Billy Bear eat it all! Love from Polar Bear. ... Message to Billy Bear from Polar Bear – Sorry I could not send you a really good bomb. All our powder has gone up in a big bang. You should have seen wot a really good explosion is like. If you’d been there. (FC 186)

The precise circumstances surrounding this reference were only known to Tolkien and his children, especially mention of the pantry and bomb creation, though it may have been in connection with events during the Bonfire Night festivities of 1942 – whatever they may have entailed, taking into account that Tolkien was at the time serving as an Air Raid Warden and would have abided by wartime security constraints.

The final reference to Billy Bingo came in Tolkien’s last Christmas letter of 1943. Therein Polar Bear asks if Priscilla ‘still has a bear called Silly Billy, or something like that; or is he worn out?’ (FC 190). By this stage Priscilla’s was 14 and perhaps growing out of her attachment to teddy bears and koalas.

From Bingo to Frodo

As can be seen, there were numerous references to the Bingos in Tolkien’s Christmas letters between 1934 and 1943, during the period in which The Lord of the Rings was substantially written. Initially Tolkien made use therein of the name Bingo and allocated it to the hobbit Bingo Baggins, son of Bilbo Baggins, the main character in The Hobbit. Humphrey Carpenter, in his 1977 biography of Tolkien, provided an outline of the various permutations of the name as the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings evolved over the Christmas – New Year period of 1937-8 (Carpenter 1977). This outline was greatly expanded upon by Christopher Tolkien in his The History of Middle-earth series (Tolkien 1983-96). From these we know that the book went through four distinct versions. In the first and second drafts Bilbo Baggins featured. In the third draft:

[Tolkien] decided to introduce a new hobbit, Bilbo’s son – and to give him the name of a family of toy koala bears owned by his children - ‘The Bingos’. So he crossed out ‘Bilbo’ in the first draft and above it wrote ‘Bingo’ …. Then he wrote the opening chapter [of The Lord of the Rings], calling the hero ‘Bingo Bolger-Baggins’ and making him Bilbo’s nephew rather than his son. (Carpenter 185-6)

As the story developed and became decidedly darker, Tolkien made a final, significant change:

After a brief period in the summer of 1939 when he considered changing everything he had done so far and starting all over again with Bilbo as the hero – presumably on the principle that the hero of the first book ought to be the hero of the second - Tolkien went back to his intention of using the ‘Bingo’ character; but as the name ‘Bingo’ had now become quite unbearable to him in view of the serious nature the story had taken on, he changed it to ‘Frodo’ - a name that already belonged to a minor character. And ‘Frodo’ it remained. (Carpenter 189)

The name Bingo Baggins was eventually given to a minor character in the book – an uncle of Bilbo Baggins and husband to Chica Grubb, both of whom are only referred to in passing within the final published edition. Christopher Tolkien, in his The History of Middle-earth series, discusses in detail Carpenter’s summary of events (Return of the Shadow 28). He basically agrees with them, but goes on to jokingly make reference to a certain bear’s fondness for gunpowder:

I find it difficult to believe this [i.e. that the name Bingo originated from Priscilla’s family of bears], yet if it is not so the coincidence is strange. If Bingo Baggins did get his name from this source, I can only suppose that the demonic character (composed of monomaniac religious despotism and a lust for destruction through high explosive) of the chief Bingo (not to mention that of his appalling wife), by which my sister and I now remember them, developed somewhat later. (Shadow 34)

The ‘demonic character’ he was referring to was, of course, Priscilla’s bear Billy Bingo. Christopher Tolkien also includes a transcription of his father’s notes concerning the eventual dropping of the Bingo reference. They outline the process of accepting, rejecting, equivocating and refining the names of prominent characters in Middle-earth, in this instance the main hobbits:

Too many hobbits. Also Bingo Bolger-Baggins a bad name. Let Bingo=Frodo, a son of Primula Brandybuck but of father Drogo Baggins (Bilbo's first cousin). So Frodo (=Bingo) is Bilbo's first cousin once removed both on Took side and on Baggins. Also he has as proper name Baggins. [Frodo struck out] No - I am too used to Bingo.

Then Christopher Tolkien comments:

All of this from 'No - I am now too used to Bingo', was struck out in pencil, and at the same time my father wrote 'Sam Gamgee' in the margin, and to 'Bingo originally intended to go alone' he added 'with Sam'. (Shadow 221)

We therefore see that in those early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, Bingo Baggins survives through to 1939 and the middle of the writing of chapter nine, at which point Frodo is installed as Bilbo’s nephew and the adventure continues. By the time The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954-5 Priscilla Tolkien was in her mid’ twenties and the collection of teddy bears and koalas, including the favourite Billy Bingo, were either worn out, lost, dispersed or tucked away in storage. If The Lord of the Rings had not taken its author down a darker path than originally anticipated for The Hobbit sequel, perhaps we may have seen Bingo Baggins as the ring bearer, or a koala in a Tolkien children’s adventure similar to the dog in his short story Roverandom (Tolkien 1998). Ultimately there was no place in the Middle-earth mythology for an exotic Australian marsupial koala and his teddy bear friends, or use of the less than noble name Bingo. Elves, goblins, shape-shifting warrior bears, dragons, orcs, hobbits and men featured instead within Tolkien’s decidedly darker, adult-focused universe.

-----------------------

References

Bingo Bear, Koala (Jungle Toys), 1928, Brighton Toy and Model Museum [webpage], 2018. Available URL: http://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Bingo_Bear,_Koala_(Jungle_Toys).

Blabey, Aaron, Don’t Call Me Bear!, Scholastic Australia, 2016, 24p.

Bogstad, Janice M. and Kaveny, Philip E. (eds.). Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, McFarland & Co., Jefferson, 2011, 309p.

Burhoe, Brian Alan. Teddy Bears in History, Civilised Bears [blog], 2018. Available URL: http://www.civilizedbears.com/cool-bears/bear-thought-dog/bears-in-literature/teddy-bears-in-history/.

Caramello Koala, Wikipedia [webpage], 2018. Available URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramello_Koala.

Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977.

Edwards, Brendan. Billie Samuels – 1934 Melbourne to Sydney [webpage], La Velocita, 2017. Available URL: https://www.lavelocita.cc/la-velocita-rides/billie-samuels-1934-melbourne-to-sydney.

Garth, John, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, London: Mariner Books, 2005.

G.H. Cowling. Tolkien Gateway [webpage], 2018. Available URL: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/G.H._Cowling.

Maniera, Leila. Christie's Century of Teddy Bears, New York: Watson-Gutpill Publications, 2001, p. 88-89.

Moyal, Anne and Organ, Michael. Koala – A Historical Biography, Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing, 2008.

Mueller-Harder, Erik, Tolkien, Iceland and Trolls, Vermont Softworks [blog], 8 September 2012. Available URL: https://vermontsoftworks.com/post/2012/tolkien-iceland-trolls.

Organ, Michael. The Scientific Discovery of the Koala: Hat Hill (Mount Kembla), New South Wales, 1803 [webpage], 9 March 2006. Available URL: https://www.uow.edu.au/~morgan/koala.htm.

-----. ‘Please Mr Frodo, is this New Zealand? Or Australia?' ... 'No Sam, it's Middle-earth.' Peter Jackson and the appropriation of Tolkien's English mythology, Metro Magazine, 177, July 2013, 56-61.

Picot, Genevieve and Gerard. Bears: The birth and early history of the King of stuffed toys, New York: Harmony Books, 1987.

Prokhorova, Natalia. The Almost Unpublished Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. 2012. Available URL:

Reynolds, Patricia. The Real Tom Bombadil, in Leaves from the Tree: J.R.R. Tolkien’s shorter fiction, Tolkien Society, London, 1991, 85-8.

Ross, Tara, Teddy Roosevelt, a political cartoon and “Teddy’s Bear” is created, Tara Ross [blog], 16 November 2017. Available URL: http://www.taraross.com/2017/11/this-day-in-history-teddys-bear-created/.

Simons, J. Rossetti's Wombat: Pre-Raphaelites and Australian animals in Victorian London. London: Middlesex University Press, 2008.

Tolkien, Christopher (editor). The History of Middle-earth, London: Allen & Unwin, 1983-96.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937.

------.The Lord of the Rings. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954-5, 3 volumes.

------. Mr. Bliss. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984.

------. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Eds. Humphrey Carpenter with Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins, 1995.

------. Roverandom. Ed. Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. London: HarperCollins, 1998.

------. Letters from Father Christmas. London: HarperCollins, 2004.

Tolkien, John and Priscilla. Tolkien Family Album. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Wall, Dorothy. Blinky Bill: The Quaint Little Australian. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1933.

Whyte, Jo. Joy Toys History of Australian Teddy Bears, Ubear [website], 19 March 2010. Available URL: https://www.ubear.com.au/joy-toys-history-of-australian-teddy-bears/.

Last updated: 22 January 2023

Michael Organ, Australia

Search This Blog

J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien’s Koala: From Bingo to Frodo

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The evolution of Tom Bombadil: From the Oxford and Berkshire countryside to Middle-earth and beyond

An Excellent Spirit: Tom Bombadil, Goldberry and the Showing of Enigmas