The One hundred and thirty-sixth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

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

Christopher Tolkien’s Saga of King Heidrek the Wise has been reissued in paperback (Abre numa nova janela) in the UK. [Blackwell’s; Genialokal (Abre numa nova janela)].

Please note that the Viking Society of Northern Research has many of its publications freely available as PDF (Abre numa nova janela)s, including Christopher Tolkien’s translation¹.

Events & Shows

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

A very special concert will be happening with the Royal Albert Hall - The Fellowship of the Ring in Concert (Abre numa nova janela). [Apr-May 2026]

Andrew Higgings has Report from First Day of Tolkien at #Kalamazoo 2025 International Medieval Congress (Abre numa nova janela). [Substack]

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Abre numa nova janela) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Abre numa nova janela).

Scholarship & Fandom

Musical Chapters from The Lord of the Rings after the Mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela).

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

Renga in Blue has gone nuts playing The Hobbit (1982) and written three posts on it (Abre numa nova janela).

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 (Abre numa nova janela) as well as Just War, Pacifism, and Inevitability of Conflict: Tolkien’s Changing Attitudes to War (Abre numa nova janela).

doubtfulsea has By ear (1) (Abre numa nova janela).

I have Fingolfin’s Findings LXXIII: Merton College’s memories of J.R.R. Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela) and…

Merchandise & Franchise

Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum has a release date: Dec 17, 2027 (Abre numa nova janela). [Variety]

Middle-earth Enterprises is bent on keeping Australians from eating plant-based macaroni and cheese at Lord of the Fries. (Abre numa nova janela) [1News, NZ]

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

Inter alia

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

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

For great French fantasy have a look at the Prix Imaginales (Abre numa nova janela). [File770]

JustWatch reveals the most-streamed Star Wars titles. [File770 (Abre numa nova janela) with graphic; JustWatch (Abre numa nova janela)]

An interview with Joe Abercrombie (Abre numa nova janela) [Grimdark Magazine]

Casey Newton has Stats from a dying web (Abre numa nova janela) - 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 (Abre numa nova janela) - it is an exceptionally easy to use option for all needs. Built originally for an independent journalists’ collective, Krautreporter (Abre numa nova janela), it is run by creative minds for creative minds. Think Patreon, just better. It is based in Germany, free of enshittification (Abre numa nova janela) and nazis.

Do use my invite link (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela), Bookshop.org (Abre numa nova janela), or Genialokal (Abre numa nova janela), 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 (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).

Have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Abre numa nova janela)

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. (Abre numa nova janela) ↩