The One hundred and thirty-sixth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

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

Christopher Tolkien’s Saga of King Heidrek the Wise has been reissued in paperback (Si apre in una nuova finestra) in the UK. [Blackwell’s; Genialokal (Si apre in una nuova finestra)].

Please note that the Viking Society of Northern Research has many of its publications freely available as PDF (Si apre in una nuova finestra)s, including Christopher Tolkien’s translation¹.

Events & Shows

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

A very special concert will be happening with the Royal Albert Hall - The Fellowship of the Ring in Concert (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Apr-May 2026]

Andrew Higgings has Report from First Day of Tolkien at #Kalamazoo 2025 International Medieval Congress (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Substack]

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Scholarship & Fandom

Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings after the Mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

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

Renga in Blue has gone nuts playing The Hobbit (1982) and written three posts on it (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) as well as Just War, Pacifism, and Inevitability of Conflict: Tolkien’s Changing Attitudes to War (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

doubtfulsea has By ear (1) (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

I have Fingolfin’s Findings LXXIII: Merton College’s memories of J.R.R. Tolkien (Si apre in una nuova finestra) and…

Merchandise & Franchise

Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum has a release date: Dec 17, 2027 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Variety]

Middle-earth Enterprises is bent on keeping Australians from eating plant-based macaroni and cheese at Lord of the Fries. (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [1News, NZ]

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

Inter alia

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

The Catholic Herald - after changing ownership to the US (Si apre in una nuova finestra) - is mentioning Tolkien and Chesterton in a recent Catholic AI project (Si apre in una nuova finestra); for more on the Tolkien connection see Tolkien Guide (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

For great French fantasy have a look at the Prix Imaginales (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [File770]

JustWatch reveals the most-streamed Star Wars titles. [File770 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) with graphic; JustWatch (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

An interview with Joe Abercrombie (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Grimdark Magazine]

Casey Newton has Stats from a dying web (Si apre in una nuova finestra) - 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra), Bookshop.org (Si apre in una nuova finestra), or Genialokal (Si apre in una nuova finestra), 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) : Facebook (Si apre in una nuova finestra) : Bluesky (Si apre in una nuova finestra) : Instagram (Si apre in una nuova finestra) : Threads (Si apre in una nuova finestra) : Mastodon (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Si apre in una nuova finestra)

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. (Si apre in una nuova finestra) ↩