The One hundred and ninety-first Roving Ranger

Life & Works

July 8, 19630 Tolkien's paper "English and Welsh (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)" is published in Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).
July 19, 1990 George Allen and Unwin (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is bought by HarperCollins (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).
July 11/13/15, 1972 Tolkien writes Letter 340 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), 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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).¹
July 14, 1916 The 11th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers (including Tolkien) is sent into action at the Somme (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) front.
July 15, 1919 Tolkien is officially released from service, well over a year after the war (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)'s end.

• Third Age 1944 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster): The Disaster of the Morannon (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [July 12]

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

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Events & Shows

Bedrock Gardens are having their 10th Annual Fairy & Hobbit House Festival (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [July 17-19]

The Brooklyn Comedy Club has Read to Filth presents: The Hobbit (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [July 26; 21+]

The Amon Hen Art Challenge (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) 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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Instagram; Punta Arenas, Chile]

The Call for Papers is out for the June 2027 MAMO Conference: The Middle Ages in the Modern World (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Oxford, UK]²

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

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), including The Pope, American Politics, and the Battle for Tolkien’s Soul in the Twenty-First Century (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and Invisible Histories: Dwarf-women and the Material Landscape of Tolkien’s Middle-earth (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Shawn E. Marchese has Found Folklore: Middle-earth on the Bayou (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Substack]

Douglas A. Anderson has More on Madlener (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Substack]

doubtfulsea has Towering.2 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

[The] Silmarillion; book-collecting minutiae has some beautiful rebindings - Gebrochene Rücken: University Press Dummy (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Robin Reinder has The T.C.B.S. and 'Allowable Distance Apart' at the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [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” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [ZooKeys]

Dimitra Fimi has The Slow LotR Re-read (9): Gandalf the Parent—Power, Persuasion, and Letting Go (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Substack]

The podcast Words do Things by Sørina Higgins has Jason Fisher as guest (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Podbean]

Miriam Ellis has Tuor in the Rainbow Cleft and Tolkien's Gifts of Beauty (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

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

David Bratman has Tolkien in the old days (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Blogspot]

Stephen C. Winter has “A Captain That Men Would Follow.” Some More Thoughts on Faramir of Gondor and Leadershi (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)p.

Abigail Nussbaum has The Great Tolkien Reread: A Journey in the Dark, The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Blogspot]

Robin Reid has Cruising The Archive (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Substack; AO3 & Tolkien]

Idiosophy has Trans-Disciplinary (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

If you are more comfortable following me and my ventures via WhatsApp - here’s the Travelling Tolkienist Channel (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). 📝

Merchandise and Franchise

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

Inter alia

Donated first edition of The Hobbit sells for £38k (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [NZ Herald; Youtube; this comment is no surprise as it is coming from a NZ First politician (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

Ansible 468 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) has been published.

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

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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) thanking Prof. Campbell of the University of Edinburgh⁴ ↩

2. h/t Dr Laura Varnam (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Instagram] ↩

3. h/t Filmstarts.de (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) ↩

4. h/t to TolkienGuide (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). ↩