The One hundred and thirty-sixth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

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

Christopher Tolkien’s Saga of King Heidrek the Wise has been reissued in paperback (Opens in a new window) in the UK. [Blackwell’s; Genialokal (Opens in a new window)].

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

Events & Shows

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

A very special concert will be happening with the Royal Albert Hall - The Fellowship of the Ring in Concert (Opens in a new window). [Apr-May 2026]

Andrew Higgings has Report from First Day of Tolkien at #Kalamazoo 2025 International Medieval Congress (Opens in a new window). [Substack]

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Opens in a new window) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Opens in a new window).

Scholarship & Fandom

Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings after the Mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window).

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

Renga in Blue has gone nuts playing The Hobbit (1982) and written three posts on it (Opens in a new window).

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 (Opens in a new window) as well as Just War, Pacifism, and Inevitability of Conflict: Tolkien’s Changing Attitudes to War (Opens in a new window).

doubtfulsea has By ear (1) (Opens in a new window).

I have Fingolfin’s Findings LXXIII: Merton College’s memories of J.R.R. Tolkien (Opens in a new window) and…

Merchandise & Franchise

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

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

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

Inter alia

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

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

For great French fantasy have a look at the Prix Imaginales (Opens in a new window). [File770]

JustWatch reveals the most-streamed Star Wars titles. [File770 (Opens in a new window) with graphic; JustWatch (Opens in a new window)]

An interview with Joe Abercrombie (Opens in a new window) [Grimdark Magazine]

Casey Newton has Stats from a dying web (Opens in a new window) - 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.?

Then do consider using Steady (Opens in a new window) - it is an exceptionally easy to use option for all needs. Built originally for an independent journalists’ collective, Krautreporter (Opens in a new window), it is run by creative minds for creative minds. Think Patreon, just better. It is based in Germany, free of enshittification (Opens in a new window) and nazis.

Do use my invite link (Opens in a new window) 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 (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).

Have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Opens in a new window)

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. (Opens in a new window) ↩