The One hundred and thirty-sixth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

May 9, 1907. Tolkien receives the book Dictionary in Englysshe and Welshe (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).
May 10, 1966. Tolkien writes Letters 287 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and 288 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), on dealing with fan telephone calls and a commemorative bust.
May 11, 1922. A Middle English Vocabulary (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Tolkien's first book, is published.
May 13, 1964. Tolkien writes Letter 256 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), mentioning The New Shadow (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).
May 15, 1945. Tolkien writes Letter 99 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), expressing his sympathy for Mrs. Williams (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)' loss.

Christopher Tolkien’s Saga of King Heidrek the Wise has been reissued in paperback (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in the UK. [Blackwell’s; Genialokal (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)].

Please note that the Viking Society of Northern Research has many of its publications freely available as PDF (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)s, including Christopher Tolkien’s translation¹.

Events & Shows

Some excellent talks are coming up in the next few weeks at the University of Oxford (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), organised by Stuart Lee, from Tolkien at the BBC (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) to Imitative Translations of Beowulf: Tolkien, Lehmann, and McCully (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

A very special concert will be happening with the Royal Albert Hall - The Fellowship of the Ring in Concert (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Apr-May 2026]

Andrew Higgings has Report from First Day of Tolkien at #Kalamazoo 2025 International Medieval Congress (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Substack]

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Scholarship & Fandom

Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings after the Mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) by Paul Corfield Godfrey available for pre-order. [TolkienGuide]

My subscribers with Steady will get a fun surprise in the near future from the Musical Chapters.

Una McCormack has a report of the Tolkien Tapestries exhibition (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

‘Poison: A History’ and a 100-year-old book signed by Tolkien: a peek at the library of bestselling fantasy novelist Guy Gavriel Kay (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [The Star; h/t Tolkien Guide (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

Renga in Blue has gone nuts playing The Hobbit (1982) and written three posts on it (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

The Journal of Tolkien Research has been adding more pieces to vol 21, issue 1, for example the exceptionally titled The Wheel of Fire: An Obsessive-Compulsive Reading of Frodo Baggins (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) as well as Just War, Pacifism, and Inevitability of Conflict: Tolkien’s Changing Attitudes to War (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

doubtfulsea has By ear (1) (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

I have Fingolfin’s Findings LXXIII: Merton College’s memories of J.R.R. Tolkien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and…

Merchandise & Franchise

Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum has a release date: Dec 17, 2027 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Variety]

Middle-earth Enterprises is bent on keeping Australians from eating plant-based macaroni and cheese at Lord of the Fries. (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [1News, NZ]

Amazon.uk commissioned a survey for this year’s Kindle Storyteller Award (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), titled The Twenty Greatest Literary Heroes (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Sustain Health Fit; see also MSN (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).]
… and yes, Frodo did pretty well!

Inter alia

With the sale of Polygon another amazing website is lost (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Kotaku; see also The Verge (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)] See also When video games journalism eats itself, we all lose out (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Guardian]

The Catholic Herald - after changing ownership to the US (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - is mentioning Tolkien and Chesterton in a recent Catholic AI project (Öffnet in neuem Fenster); for more on the Tolkien connection see Tolkien Guide (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

For great French fantasy have a look at the Prix Imaginales (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [File770]

JustWatch reveals the most-streamed Star Wars titles. [File770 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) with graphic; JustWatch (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

An interview with Joe Abercrombie (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Grimdark Magazine]

Casey Newton has Stats from a dying web (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - mentioning that due to genAI-searches the websites delivering the actual content have lost out 70-80% of their traffic.

Thinking about starting a newsletter, podcast, Patreon, Substack etc.?

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Do use my invite link (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and start with three months fee-free.
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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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), Bookshop.org (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), or Genialokal (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), 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 (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).

Have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

As this is 2025 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 average time of curating this newsletter ranges from 12-16 hours for the bi-weekly edition and 6-8 hours for the weekly one.

1. h/t to Jason Fisher. (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) ↩