The One hundred and ninety-first Roving Ranger

Life & Works

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

• Third Age 1944 (Abre numa nova janela): The Disaster of the Morannon (Abre numa nova janela). [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 (Abre numa nova janela) [July 17-19]

The Brooklyn Comedy Club has Read to Filth presents: The Hobbit (Abre numa nova janela) [July 26; 21+]

The Amon Hen Art Challenge (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) [Instagram; Punta Arenas, Chile]

The Call for Papers is out for the June 2027 MAMO Conference: The Middle Ages in the Modern World (Abre numa nova janela) [Oxford, UK]²

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

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Abre numa nova janela).

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

Shawn E. Marchese has Found Folklore: Middle-earth on the Bayou (Abre numa nova janela) [Substack]

Douglas A. Anderson has More on Madlener (Abre numa nova janela) [Substack]

doubtfulsea has Towering.2 (Abre numa nova janela).

[The] Silmarillion; book-collecting minutiae has some beautiful rebindings - Gebrochene Rücken: University Press Dummy (Abre numa nova janela).

Robin Reinder has The T.C.B.S. and 'Allowable Distance Apart' at the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026 (Abre numa nova janela) [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” (Abre numa nova janela) [ZooKeys]

Dimitra Fimi has The Slow LotR Re-read (9): Gandalf the Parent—Power, Persuasion, and Letting Go (Abre numa nova janela) [Substack]

The podcast Words do Things by Sørina Higgins has Jason Fisher as guest (Abre numa nova janela) [Podbean]

Miriam Ellis has Tuor in the Rainbow Cleft and Tolkien's Gifts of Beauty (Abre numa nova janela).

The Topography of Grendel’s Moor in a Scandinavian context (Abre numa nova janela) has quite a few mentions of Tolkien [Nordic Journal of English Studies]

David Bratman has Tolkien in the old days (Abre numa nova janela) [Blogspot]

Stephen C. Winter has “A Captain That Men Would Follow.” Some More Thoughts on Faramir of Gondor and Leadershi (Abre numa nova janela)p.

Abigail Nussbaum has The Great Tolkien Reread: A Journey in the Dark, The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm (Abre numa nova janela) [Blogspot]

Robin Reid has Cruising The Archive (Abre numa nova janela) [Substack; AO3 & Tolkien]

Idiosophy has Trans-Disciplinary (Abre numa nova janela).

If you are more comfortable following me and my ventures via WhatsApp - here’s the Travelling Tolkienist Channel (Abre numa nova janela). 📝

Merchandise and Franchise

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

Inter alia

Donated first edition of The Hobbit sells for £38k (Abre numa nova janela) [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 (Abre numa nova janela) [NZ Herald; Youtube; this comment is no surprise as it is coming from a NZ First politician (Abre numa nova janela)]

Ansible 468 (Abre numa nova janela) has been published.

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

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 (Abre numa nova janela) thanking Prof. Campbell of the University of Edinburgh⁴ ↩

2. h/t Dr Laura Varnam (Abre numa nova janela) [Instagram] ↩

3. h/t Filmstarts.de (Abre numa nova janela) ↩

4. h/t to TolkienGuide (Abre numa nova janela). ↩