The One hundred and ninety-first Roving Ranger

Life & Works

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

• Third Age 1944 (Si apre in una nuova finestra): The Disaster of the Morannon (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [July 17-19]

The Brooklyn Comedy Club has Read to Filth presents: The Hobbit (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [July 26; 21+]

The Amon Hen Art Challenge (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Instagram; Punta Arenas, Chile]

The Call for Papers is out for the June 2027 MAMO Conference: The Middle Ages in the Modern World (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Oxford, UK]²

The Fantasy Forest festival in Sudeley, UK, is not only offering a LotR Camp (Si apre in una nuova finestra) but I would also love to participate in the tomato tossing (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [July 17-19]

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra), including The Pope, American Politics, and the Battle for Tolkien’s Soul in the Twenty-First Century (Si apre in una nuova finestra) and Invisible Histories: Dwarf-women and the Material Landscape of Tolkien’s Middle-earth (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Shawn E. Marchese has Found Folklore: Middle-earth on the Bayou (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Substack]

Douglas A. Anderson has More on Madlener (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Substack]

doubtfulsea has Towering.2 (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

[The] Silmarillion; book-collecting minutiae has some beautiful rebindings - Gebrochene Rücken: University Press Dummy (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Robin Reinder has The T.C.B.S. and 'Allowable Distance Apart' at the Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [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” (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [ZooKeys]

Dimitra Fimi has The Slow LotR Re-read (9): Gandalf the Parent—Power, Persuasion, and Letting Go (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Substack]

The podcast Words do Things by Sørina Higgins has Jason Fisher as guest (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Podbean]

Miriam Ellis has Tuor in the Rainbow Cleft and Tolkien's Gifts of Beauty (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

The Topography of Grendel’s Moor in a Scandinavian context (Si apre in una nuova finestra) has quite a few mentions of Tolkien [Nordic Journal of English Studies]

David Bratman has Tolkien in the old days (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Blogspot]

Stephen C. Winter has “A Captain That Men Would Follow.” Some More Thoughts on Faramir of Gondor and Leadershi (Si apre in una nuova finestra)p.

Abigail Nussbaum has The Great Tolkien Reread: A Journey in the Dark, The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Blogspot]

Robin Reid has Cruising The Archive (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Substack; AO3 & Tolkien]

Idiosophy has Trans-Disciplinary (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

If you are more comfortable following me and my ventures via WhatsApp - here’s the Travelling Tolkienist Channel (Si apre in una nuova finestra). 📝

Merchandise and Franchise

The Language of Archetypes in Film Franchises: Exploring symbolic consumption structures through narrative archetypes (Si apre in una nuova finestra)[Bachelor thesis; University of Gothenburg; on the LotR film franchise]

Inter alia

Donated first edition of The Hobbit sells for £38k (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [NZ Herald; Youtube; this comment is no surprise as it is coming from a NZ First politician (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

Ansible 468 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) has been published.

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If you are interested in my other Tolkien-related work please have a look:
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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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) thanking Prof. Campbell of the University of Edinburgh⁴ ↩

2. h/t Dr Laura Varnam (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Instagram] ↩

3. h/t Filmstarts.de (Si apre in una nuova finestra) ↩

4. h/t to TolkienGuide (Si apre in una nuova finestra). ↩