The One hundred and ninety-first Roving Ranger

Life & Works

July 8, 19630 Tolkien's paper "English and Welsh (Opens in a new window)" is published in Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures (Opens in a new window).
July 19, 1990 George Allen and Unwin (Opens in a new window) is bought by HarperCollins (Opens in a new window).
July 11/13/15, 1972 Tolkien writes Letter 340 (Opens in a new window), on headstone for his wife, success of his stories.
July 12, 1973 Tolkien is awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Edinburgh (Opens in a new window).¹
July 14, 1916 The 11th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers (including Tolkien) is sent into action at the Somme (Opens in a new window) front.
July 15, 1919 Tolkien is officially released from service, well over a year after the war (Opens in a new window)'s end.

• Third Age 1944 (Opens in a new window): The Disaster of the Morannon (Opens in a new window). [July 12]

The unlikely pen pal who shaped Tolkien’s later years [Observer]

The way the internet is going reliable information will be more difficult to find every day - so a curated newsletter like the Roving Ranger is more needed than ever.
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Events & Shows

Bedrock Gardens are having their 10th Annual Fairy & Hobbit House Festival (Opens in a new window) [July 17-19]

The Brooklyn Comedy Club has Read to Filth presents: The Hobbit (Opens in a new window) [July 26; 21+]

The Amon Hen Art Challenge (Opens in a new window) is happening in August [Bluesky]

The Feria Medieval will see the possibly most southern Tolkien Society in the world in action, the Sociedad Tolkien Magallanes (Opens in a new window) [Instagram; Punta Arenas, Chile]

The Call for Papers is out for the June 2027 MAMO Conference: The Middle Ages in the Modern World (Opens in a new window) [Oxford, UK]²

The Fantasy Forest festival in Sudeley, UK, is not only offering a LotR Camp (Opens in a new window) but I would also love to participate in the tomato tossing (Opens in a new window) [July 17-19]

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Opens in a new window).

Scholarship & Fandom

The YouTube channel Emulated Vintage Gaming has followed up on last year’s “Lord of the Rings LotRO” adventure… Now you can follow “The Hobbit” through all the MMO’s Middle-earth [Youtube]³

The Journal of Tolkien Research has started issue 2 of vol. 24 (Opens in a new window), including The Pope, American Politics, and the Battle for Tolkien’s Soul in the Twenty-First Century (Opens in a new window) and Invisible Histories: Dwarf-women and the Material Landscape of Tolkien’s Middle-earth (Opens in a new window).

Shawn E. Marchese has Found Folklore: Middle-earth on the Bayou (Opens in a new window) [Substack]

Douglas A. Anderson has More on Madlener (Opens in a new window) [Substack]

doubtfulsea has Towering.2 (Opens in a new window).

[The] Silmarillion; book-collecting minutiae has some beautiful rebindings - Gebrochene Rücken: University Press Dummy (Opens in a new window).

Robin Reinder has The T.C.B.S. and 'Allowable Distance Apart' at the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026 (Opens in a new window) [Substack]

Aaaand another addition to the list of names inspired by Tolkien - Laurinque Elenya: “Coral among stars: A new octocoral family (Anthozoa, Octocorallia, Malacalcyonacea) from seamounts in the tropical eastern Pacific” (Opens in a new window) [ZooKeys]

Dimitra Fimi has The Slow LotR Re-read (9): Gandalf the Parent—Power, Persuasion, and Letting Go (Opens in a new window) [Substack]

The podcast Words do Things by Sørina Higgins has Jason Fisher as guest (Opens in a new window) [Podbean]

Miriam Ellis has Tuor in the Rainbow Cleft and Tolkien's Gifts of Beauty (Opens in a new window).

The Topography of Grendel’s Moor in a Scandinavian context (Opens in a new window) has quite a few mentions of Tolkien [Nordic Journal of English Studies]

David Bratman has Tolkien in the old days (Opens in a new window) [Blogspot]

Stephen C. Winter has “A Captain That Men Would Follow.” Some More Thoughts on Faramir of Gondor and Leadershi (Opens in a new window)p.

Abigail Nussbaum has The Great Tolkien Reread: A Journey in the Dark, The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm (Opens in a new window) [Blogspot]

Robin Reid has Cruising The Archive (Opens in a new window) [Substack; AO3 & Tolkien]

Idiosophy has Trans-Disciplinary (Opens in a new window).

If you are more comfortable following me and my ventures via WhatsApp - here’s the Travelling Tolkienist Channel (Opens in a new window). 📝

Merchandise and Franchise

The Language of Archetypes in Film Franchises: Exploring symbolic consumption structures through narrative archetypes (Opens in a new window)[Bachelor thesis; University of Gothenburg; on the LotR film franchise]

Inter alia

Donated first edition of The Hobbit sells for £38k (Opens in a new window) [BBC]

Lovely to see that for Kiwis these terms have become everyday pejorative terms for the people on the Left: 'Stop laundering these lies, you breathless Hobbits': Shane Jones fires back on limo expenses (Opens in a new window) [NZ Herald; Youtube; this comment is no surprise as it is coming from a NZ First politician (Opens in a new window)]

Ansible 468 (Opens in a new window) has been published.

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According to German law I have to inform you all links to enterprises, artists, products etc. are [unpaid advertisements.] Some purchase links may earn me a small commission from Blackwell's (Opens in a new window), Bookshop.org (Opens in a new window), or Genialokal (Opens in a new window), the (independent) bookshops of my personal trust (one with a Tolkien connection!)

If you are interested in my other Tolkien-related work please have a look:
The Tolkienist Blog (Opens in a new window) : Facebook (Opens in a new window) : Bluesky (Opens in a new window) : Instagram (Opens in a new window) : Threads (Opens in a new window) : Mastodon (Opens in a new window) - and have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Opens in a new window)

As this is 2026 I would like to note that this newsletter is 100% human-made, curated by me, Marcel R. Bülles. This also holds true for everything I write with my blog and here at Steady. Also, the minimum time of curating this newsletter ranges from 8-12 hours every week. Please consider supporting me so I can continue offering the Roving Ranger - thank you.

1. See the letter by Tolkien (Opens in a new window) thanking Prof. Campbell of the University of Edinburgh⁴ ↩

2. h/t Dr Laura Varnam (Opens in a new window) [Instagram] ↩

3. h/t Filmstarts.de (Opens in a new window) ↩

4. h/t to TolkienGuide (Opens in a new window). ↩