The Bovadium Fragments: Together with The Origins of Bovadium

by J.R.R. Tolkien, Richard Ovenden, Christopher Tolkien (Editor)

The first-ever 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.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction

144 pages, Hardcover

First published October 9, 2025

About the author

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.

Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal.

Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist who painted for pleasure and relaxation. He excelled at landscapes and often drew inspiration from his own stories. He illustrated many scenes from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, sometimes drawing or painting as he was writing in order to visualize the imagined scene more clearly.

Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His illuminating lectures on works such as the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, illustrate his deep knowledge of ancient languages and at the same time provide new insights into peoples and legends from a remote past.

Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1892 to English parents. He came to England aged three and was brought up in and around Birmingham. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1915 and saw active service in France during the First World War before being invalided home. After the war he pursued an academic career teaching Old and Middle English. Alongside his professional work, he invented his own languages and began to create what he called a mythology for England; it was this ‘legendarium’ that he would work on throughout his life. But his literary work did not start and end with Middle-earth, he also wrote poetry, children’s stories and fairy tales for adults. He died in 1973 and is buried in Oxford where he spent most of his adult life.

Reviews

[Diana Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part story and part history of a controversy of how to eliminate congestion caused by motorcars. I can appreciate Tolkien's dislike of motors, the noise, the smell and the effects they have on nature. He does make his point in this somewhat satire.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tolkien readers cling to the dinner table for every morsel and even after Christopher’s death, morsels continue to be swept from the tabletop and into our greedy mouths. The Bovadium Fragments (together with an essay entitled “The Origin of Bovadium”, for any reader of Middle-earth's extra material will know that the scholarly insights into Tolkien’s additional works often outweighs the work itself in wordcount) is a very strange, non-Middle-earth piece of writing. Its strangeness is mostly derived from its silliness, both intentional and not. Christopher refers to it as a ‘satirical fantasy’, and dates it somewhere around the end of the 1950s. The text itself amounts to about thirty or forty pages. It concerns Bovadium, Tolkien’s fantasy version of Oxford, and a Daemon, who created machines called ‘Motores’. Quite evidently: motor-cars. Tolkien’s dislike for the car is no secret (an opinion he, at least, shared with C. S. Lewis). He had his own, named ‘Jo’, which he infamously drove very badly. He later replaced it with ‘Jo 2’ but ultimately, by the end of the Second World War, gave up driving and returned to the trusty bicycle. The Bovadium Fragments, though wrapped up neatly as a linguistic heady short story (there are forewords to the main text by invented writers, and allusions to two separate languages, for at the time of their writing, Bovadium was an archaeological site), is a bad disguise for Tolkien’s disgust for the motorcar. Take this passage from the text,

He [the Daemon] had promised speed; and he had promised ease and the saving of time. But as for speed: before long the Via Maxima [Bovadium’s main street] was packed with an unceasing stream of Motores crawling so slowly from halt to halt that a man on foot could (like an animal) walk its whole length and back to find a ‘mounted’ friend only ten yards further on his way, while the horn of his Motor trumpeted in vexation. And as for ease: the ‘owners’ now had a multitude of cares (tending the ailments of the monsters, and seeking places where to leave them) which consumed most of their time to no purpose.
It is true that there were not a few who had ceased to govern their Motores, but had become their servants, finding chief pleasure in waiting on them. Such men cared very little what their Motores did, so long as their skins shone and they purred. Indeed on the days formerly set aside for prayers and rites in the temples many would now wheel their Motores out upon a platform before their houses and there tend them and worship them, prostrate upon the ground. On these days the Motores looked indeed as if prepared for a great ceremony, but their ‘owenrs’ were content with the dirty garments of slaves […] For those who had purchased ‘speed’ now often sat for hours looking at the unsavoury hinder-end of a Motor in front, and so great a fury was engendered in them that, when released, they rushed headlong like madmen, slaying any fools on foot that they met, or crashing recklessly into rival Motores. In this way thousands were dismembered or burned to death.

If his viewpoint isn’t clear enough to see here, he put it more plainly still in a letter, in Middle-earth terms: ‘‘the spirit of Isengard, if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up, the present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case.’’

The subsequent essay then becomes something of a 20th century town council meeting. Through work I have attended several of these and like “The Origin of Bovadium”, most of the discourse surrounds traffic. (I once attended a council meeting in the small town I work in weekly, in which a good forty minutes was given to the agenda item concerning the town’s speed limit being dropped from 30mph to 20mph (it was eventually passed — something I forget when I am driving through even now! — and the following meeting instead spent forty minutes discussing dog poo — these are the discussions when the town’s population is hardly more than 3,000.)) Richard Ovenden, the writer of the essay, explores the Oxford Tolkien would have known when he first arrived in 1911 and the history of Oxford and the dawn of the dreaded motorcar. You would need to be a dedicated Tolkien reader to seek this out. I do not quite put myself in this category, though here I am, but my excuse is my avoiding HoME. Either way, excusing Ovenden’s reflections on early 20th century Oxford and the plans and laws for its roads, there is not much to be garnered from Tolkien’s own words here. Many would place it even lower down the list of priorities as it does not relate to Middle-earth; but I think there is something to be said for the works that do not: it is a different flavour. I might say I am lucky to live in a predominantly small and pedestrianised city!

[James Ashcroft · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the drip of original content from Tolkien and his son Christopher truly dries up, I was delighted to find this latest publication to be such a gem. Definitely one for the hardcore lovers of Tolkien, but I really enjoyed this one. The book itself, too, is beautifully designed and printed.

[Susan]

Published on 9 October, the book is a satire on industrialisation, and the impact of the motor car on Bovadium (Oxford). Something very different from Middle-earth!

[Othy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Then the Northerners were filled with hate and envy, holding the opinion that misery should be equal, or if unequal that other men should bear the heavier burden."

For someone who supposedly disliked allegory of all kinds, Tolkien writes some pretty burning satire. Unlike his other allegories, Bovadium gets pretty dark in the end, though this is appropriate for the story itself.

The Fragments themselves are actually complete, being fragmentary only in their fictional in-world universe. They are good but short, and I'm not convinced that an entire book was necessary to tell them. The origins of Bovadium, as told by Ovenden, are interesting, but it seemed like filler to get the page count up to a sufficient number. I wish these short works were simply gathered together in a collection, though it seems there is an audience for these stand-alone volumes (I bought it, after all...)

[Luke Banda · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s such fun whenever a new Tolkien book comes out! I enjoyed The Bovadium Fragments immensely. Tolkien’s satire is top-notch, and the companion paper by Richard Ovenden is very insightful and adds a lot of background information on the situation that Tolkien was critiquing.
Apart from its contents, the physical book itself is very well made. The illustrations and photographs are great, and the very slight green shade of the paper goes great with the dark green page accents.

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting satirical fantasy story about archaeologists looking at fragments of a story about an abandoned city called Bovadium, which turns out to be Oxford, and how it fell due to the devilish motorcars that gradually enslave the inhabitants of the city, eventually causing its downfall.

J. R. R. Tolkien initially intended to publish the story but put it aside when comments by friends indicated that the language used and satire might go over the head of readers. It was finally published by his son, along with notes and background information that lead to the writing of the story.

It was written at a time when Tolkien was at Oxford, and Oxford itself became a centre of car manufacturing for Morris cars. As the car population at Oxford grew, congestion became a fact of life. One solution was to build a road across a green area in Oxford, a controversial solution which became a battle between those advocating and opposed to the idea, which Tolkien was aware of.

The story itself has the feel of a fable, one that people who own and drive cars in congested areas will be familiar with. Whether we will all end up as Bovadium in the end is up to the reader to decide.

[Logan Agnew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore essentially everything about The Bovadium Fragments. It was all the fun and whimsy with a comic and satirical flare that I’ve come to love in Tolkien’s non-Middle-earth works. The essay that makes up around half the book is also really interesting and gives a lot of contextual information around why the Fragments were written in the first place. It is really sad to see that this is the last of Christopher Tolkien’s edited works after more than 5 years after his death. To finally see this is the end of his legacy is really sad to see, but I found this work to be incredibly fun and interesting!

[Debora · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5⭐️ ❝All Motores stopped dead. Silence fell. The silence of a tomb. For when at length men came to the city, walking over the tips of the inert Motores, they found that all the inhabitants were dead. Slain by the poisonous fumes, their shades had fled to seek a cleaner air in Hell.❞

Half of the book are the supposedly found fragments entailing the downfall of Bovadium, almost like an English Iliad. Where the professors of course assume not everything is true cause man is so knowledgeable and great - nor would they themselves ever make such mistakes, of course!
The other half is basically an explanation of the time in which Tolkien wrote and why he’d write about Motores, which was fine. I did really like the drawings and pictures in the book.

In short: a solid satire, the other half of also enjoyable for people who are either history nerds or Tolkien nerds.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for one last glimpse into Tolkien’s humor, but also for the beautifully printed book with Tolkien’s inks and watercolors (7 in all), plus photos and maps. Lovers of Oxford will like this.

[Marko Vasić · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Bovadium Fragments” have, until now, never been published in any edition. Albeit Tolkien endeavoured to have this satire printed in “Time and Tide” magazine in 1960, and his publisher Rayner Unwin, along with his son Christopher, later supported the idea, he abandoned the design after a lukewarm response from his associate Clyde Kilby, who at that time was assisting him in organising The Silmarillion. Kilby presented Tolkien two principal concerns (from his own point of view): he feared that the tragic undertone permeating the satire might go unnoticed, and that the abundant use of Latin might alienate modern readers. Astonishingly, Tolkien received a very similar remark from an editor when he tried to publish The Silmarillion.

Up to this edition, information about “The Bovadium Fragments” could only be found in one or two of Tolkien’s letters or in the encyclopaedia The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Volume 1: Chronology, which mentions that these fragments comprised a story about an imaginary Oxford, seen through the prism of a future (and not entirely reliable) academic study.

Therefore, I feared I might be disappointed, as I was with The Notion Club Papers – Tolkien’s attempt to write a science-fiction novel, which did not quite come to fruition in the most successful way. Yet “The Bovadium Fragments” left a far more positive impression on me.

Tolkien’s arrival in Oxford in 1911, when he entered Exeter College, coincided with the rise of the motor industry led by magnate William R. Morris, which would swiftly alter the pulse of the ancient university town. The new, eastern industrial district would soon “drown out” the old university Oxford. This would later inspire Tolkien to write a satirical story depicting the imagined future of the city bearing the Latin name Vadum Bovinum (that is, Bovadium, in Old English Oxenaford – “ford for oxen”, i.e. Oxford), which had suffocated in its own dependence on motor vehicles.

He also drew inspiration from the humorous poem “The Motor Bus” by Professor Alfred Denis Godley, published in “The Oxford Magazine” in 1914, which mocked the intrusion of motorised transport into the academic setting. Tolkien, who harboured a deep disdain for modernity and mechanisation – as we learn both from his letters and from Carpenter’s biography – repeatedly expressed regret that noise, smog, and urban chaos had violated the beauty and spirit of old Oxford.

He voiced a similar critique of the automobile’s expansion in Mr. Bliss, though that novel is far more benign and intended for children, unlike “The Bovadium Fragments”, which are considerably darker and inspired by the classical world. Tolkien attributes the beginnings of industrialisation to a rebellious Daemon (not a demon in the Christian sense of a fallen angel, but the Greek daimon δαίμων – either a lesser deity or a spirit often serving as the protector of a household or a person’s fate) who multiplies in the dark labyrinths of the earth creatures he calls Motores, which one day, through carelessness, will burst into the outer world and “seduce” mortals to “adopt” and “nurture” them – to make them serve as slaves at first, until the situation is reversed. The entire satire has an atmosphere reminiscent of Aristophanes’ The Frogs, and its ending most closely parallels that ancient comedy – Charon is dethroned from his place as psychopomp, and motorised boats take over the task of ferrying souls across the Styx.

This edition is among the last to bear Christopher Tolkien’s editorial imprint, and his role dominates the first two-thirds. In the final third, another editor – Richard Ovenden – contributes an extensive essay on Oxford during the period when Tolkien dwelled thither. Much of this essay is not directly related to Tolkien’s story itself, but it provides a broader picture of the people and events that inspired him to compose this satire, which, until now, had remained hidden from readers’ eyes.

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have commented, in another forum, that one of the basic questions to ask of the various posthumous books "by JRR Tolkien" is, to what extent is it actually by JRRT. In the particular case of The Bovadium Fragments , this is an unusually easy question to ask.

The book is 124 + xx pages long, which is to say 144. Of these pages, there are 44 which could, with complete legitimacy, have been published as a chapbook by JRRT, with minimal notes by Christopher Tolkien (CJRT). Another ten pages could well have been added to that chapbook as an appendix.

The remaining ninety pages are apparatus. The xx include the usual vi of title page, copyright notices, table of contents, that sort of thing; another v of a Publisher's Note by one Chris Smith; and an Introduction by CJRT. With the possible exception of the Publisher's Note, this material could also have fit legitimtely into such a chapbook, amking it 74 pages long -- so, slightly over half the length of this admittedly slim volume.

The remainder is taken up by an essay, "The Origin of Bovadium," by Richard Ovenden, "Bodley's Librarian," meaning the head of Oxford University's most important library. It is, basically, a history of the incursion of the motor-car into the geography and culture of England in general and Oxford in particular, with special discussion of the decades of debate that went into attempting to find a solution to the destruction of Oxford's traditionally tranquil nature by said incursion taking over Oxford's High Street, or "the High."

Occasionally, and especially towards the end of the essay, Overton discusses how this bears on JRRT and his composition of the Fragments.

Which brings me to the Fragments themselves.

The Bovadium Fragments are, I think, the closest JRRT could ever have come to writing actual science fiction. The conceit is that, in some distant(ish) future, archaeologists excavating "Bovadium" (which is a Latinish sort of name for Oxford itself, meaning, more or less, the Way of the Ox) find these fragments and decipher them into their tongue.

Aside from the actual historical facts about motor-cars in Oxford, the springboard for the Fragments is a 1914 poem by A.D. Godley, an Oxford scholar himself, called "Motor Bus," a very early satire on motor culture whose primary point of amusement is its careful utilization of, and rhyming with, the various declensions of a Latin backformation of the word "bus" (which in fact comes from the Latin word omnibus).

JRRT takes this conceit to a much higher level of satire. "Bovadium," it seems, was a place of two languages, which equate, roughly, to demotic English and scholarly Latin. The Fragments, then, are translated from the scholarly language, and so motor-cars are, in them, referred to as motores. They are introduced into Bovadium by a "Daemon," for the purpose of destroying peace among the people thereof: a purpose which succeeds fully.

An important part of the satire is the introduction of a factory for the creation of these motores, taking its cue from the actual creation and growth of the company which came to be known as Morris Motors in the greater Oxford, which not only brought more cars to Oxford, but caused a massive population explosion as workers (not all English) came to build the cars, tend the factory, and run the business.

In the end, the civilization of Bovadium is destroyed in what may be the first appearance in fiction of the Terminal Traffic Jam.

There are three Fragments. The first is a short piece in Latin; the second, a longer piece which -- beginning with a rough translation of the first -- tells the entire sad story of Bovadium and the Daemon; and the third, a sort of postscript. There is also a bit of scholarly apparatus by the people studying the Fragments.

Is this a book by JRR Tolkien? Well, about half of it is; the other half ought, perhaps, to have been published in a scholarly journal. Overton's essay is not overly scholarly -- certainly easy enough for a lay reader like me to follow -- but I can't help feeling that it was largely added to provide the semblance of a full-sized book.

Eight out of ten stalled vehicles.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is unreasonable of me to rate this 5⭐, and yet this is where we find ourselves! 🧐

Of the 144 pages, about 35 contain Tolkien's words, but they are interesting in being post-apocalyptic science fiction! Set hundreds of years in the future following an environmental catastrophe, archeologists/philologists draw comically inaccurate conclusions about mid-20th century Oxford based on fragmentary documents relating to the consumerist worship of motor vehicles, with consequent traffic congestion and its fatal ecological impact. The satire that starts out whimsically enough, rather like LotR, proceeds to a very dark place.

Given the story is written as a mock academic piece with fictitious footnotes, the editorial contributions of Tolkien Jr are not always easily distinguishable from the story, which actually nicely added to the meta-ness of it.

The bulk of the book, then, is Ovenden's social history of Oxford's mid 20th century industrial and urban development, and the town planning battles (with maps) that raged around motor infrastructure, as this forms the context for Tolkien's story.
It's unlikely I'd otherwise give a 5⭐ review to a local history essay about urban development, and yet as it relates to Prof. T., here, as I said, do we find ourselves 🤨

[Jesse Train · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately I can’t recommend this one. The only actual storytelling part of this (in JRR Tolkien’s familiar author voice) is Fragment II, which is only 16 pages long. Everything before that is quite confusing and disjointed (there’s multiple pages in Latin, and multiple authors) setup for Fragment II, and everything after Fragment II is basically other versions and analysis of said fragment. Then (because the publisher didn’t want the book to end at 56 pages long, I can think of no other reason), there’s tacked on a 60+ page essay about Tolkien’s life around the time of writing this story, and the traffic in the city of Oxford. Some of the essay is full of guesses of what May have been JRR’s influences to write Fragment II.

Sure, Tolkien’s actual writing here is worth reading. He has the same endearing style we all love. But outside of those core 16-30 pages the rest of this book can really be skipped. It’s too bad he didn’t write an extended version of this story himself. For the actual content by JRR I’d give this 3.5 stars.

However, this should have been published as part of a compilation of short stories, not as a standalone book. And the copious amounts of less enjoyable filler content is the reason I’m giving this 2 stars.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one that's more filler than meaningful content, although prettily presented.

The actual Tolkien writing takes up about 30 pages in a book less than 150 pages. The rest is context and academic analysis.

Some may love it, especially Tolkien fans who will lovingly pore over every word, syllable and sentence Tolkien wrote. It is a story that has been a source of rumour for decades. The story itself is a silly tale, meant to be so, and decrying the increasing use of motor vehicles on Oxford's roads. It's fair enough, though hardly essential Tolkien. (The clue is in the word 'fragments'.)

An essay by Richard Ovenden, The Origin of Bovadium, gives us context.

For Tolkien purists, although I suspect even some of those may balk at this. Some will say that it is another facet to Tolkien's work; others will decry a blatant cash-in.

Can there really be anything else to be dredged up from the Tolkien Archives? Tolkien's favourite bus tickets? His school exercise books? For completists only - others will be less impressed.

[Briana · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's interesting if you're a huge Tolkien fan, but it is a very short work. Half the book is the essay on traffic on Oxford, which is interesting, but perhaps more interesting if one has actually been to Oxford. (I haven't. So I wasn't going to pore over maps of proposed roads in a city I've never seen.) The general idea that people are against too much traffic in their town is certainly not new and will be relatable to many people. The depiction of people obsessed with their cars and giving them all their time and space is on the nose, and something that will resonate even as, for instance, Americans seem to ask to no avail for more public transportation. You need a car if you want to go most places here.

Otherwise, the story itself is a little Too Much in a very Tolkien way, with different fragments and different versions and a fake introduction by fake scholars and parts written in Latin. I was on board with cars=annoying, but following all that for the sake of such a small joke was a bit exhausting honestly.

[Thijs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is lackluster, and that's not (entirely) Tolkien's fault. It's a really short story, that they managed to pat out with superfluous material that, granted, does add extra context to the whole thing. Which it badly needs. Also, it should have been part of a collection, not a standalone book. That's the part that's not Tolkien's fault.
The excessive use of Latin, though relevant in the context of the story, is his fault. He's been argued against publishing it, and I have to agree with that assessment. Though ironically I do think it should have been published at the time, when it was relevant, and have been a curiosity today.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

That this book was even published speaks to the appeal of the greatest writer in the English language of the last century. And it shows just how fertile J.R.R. Tolkien's mind was--and in how many different genres the man could write.

A playful, satirical look into the growth of the city of Oxford and the ideas of city planners to build new roads to adapt to that growth. And we see also the master's delight in wordplay.

An interesting read for us Tolkien geeks, likely less interesting to those who do not revere the man as we do.

[Justin Wiggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has felt quite good to have started off 2026 by reading a new Tolkien book! The Bovadium Fragments was a fascinating and challenging read. The fantasy story by Tolkien strongly conveys his hatred of machine worship, and his great love for the natural world. The historical context of the story by Tolkien's son Christopher was very interesting, and the essay by Richard Ovenden on the historical context that inspired Tolkien's story which he wrote in the 1940s was very enlightening. This will be a good book to reread many times.

[Scott Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harper is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. There are barely a handful of words by Tolkien in this volume. The best part of the book is dedicated to a history of the civic planning of Oxford and the discussions of how motor car traffic might be kept from ruining the country.

That said, this does reinforce Tolkien’s love of nature and country living. It’s relevant to his work as a whole, it’s just a very small fragment.

[Jenna Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is this that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caeder a Bo —
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:
Wither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!

[amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conflicted on the rating for this. I enjoyed it enough but the whole time reading it I just wished Tolkien had written Bovadium into a full novel or story himself.

Fragment 2 was intriguing and the essay The Origin of Bovadium was interesting but as a published work this just felt very unnecessary and I don't think I really gained anything from reading this.

[Tristan Sherwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightfully funny, and matched by an excellent essay from Richard Ovenden.

Having relished reading Tolkien for years—both his Middle-earth legendarium and his translation work—I can honestly say it’s a rare joy to read something that reveals such razor-sharp wit and mischievous satire.

Now I can’t help wishing he’d written more in this style.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the post war years when Ox-Ford (Bo-Vadium) was changing from a small, densely built University town and the fast growing Cowley factories turning out the Cars that ordinary people longer for, Tolkien saw the traffic and mourned the Shire. This delightful Short book was one result.

[Ryan T. Guinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not going to not give it 5 stars, simply because it is a beautiful book, and it gets at something that has become even more relatable with the overwhelming reliance on technology. A challenging, but fun read.

[DW · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story itself is really good, but the book is overstuffed with filler.

[Aidan Louter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short story followed by an informative history of Oxford’s “war” against the industrialization of motorized vehicles or “the Motores” as Tolkien depicts it.