The One hundred and twenty-third Roving Ranger

Life and Works

Feb 5-9, 1968. Filming for the documentary Tolkien in Oxford (Opens in a new window).
Feb 10, 1939. Tolkien writes Letter 36 (Opens in a new window), planning to “make a special effort to finish [LotR] before June 15…”
Feb 11, 1945. Tolkien writes Letter 97 (Opens in a new window), displaying “etymological exasperation.”
Feb 13, 1961. Tolkien writes letter 228a (Opens in a new window), with an “apology for being late with one of his translations for the Jerusalem Bible (Opens in a new window).”
Feb 14, 1896. Tolkien dictates a letter to his father (Opens in a new window).

“Lines from The Shire. To write poetry was one of Tolkien’s first ambitions” (Opens in a new window) [The Critic]

New World Record Set for Sale of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (Opens in a new window) [Fine Book & Collector]

Opening time for Tolkien and CS Lewis - Harry Mount on the reopening of the Inklings' Oxford pubs (Opens in a new window) [The Oldie; seems to be an almost identical reissue of his 2022 piece (Opens in a new window) with the Spectator]

Events & Shows

Review: Lewis and Tolkien at Taproot Theater (Opens in a new window) [Broadway World]

The Arden Theatre (Opens in a new window) Hobbit - starting in Philly in April - has a cute trailer [Youtube]

The Mineral Area Fine Arts Academy (Opens in a new window) in Park Hills, Missouri, is also putting on the Hobbit (Feb 14-16 (Opens in a new window))

Robin Reid has the Tolkien Studies Area, PCA, Program (Opens in a new window)(April, New Orleans).

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

Jason Fisher has C.S. Lewis by Joel Heck (Opens in a new window).

Cults, Hobbits, a missing student: Is MSU’s secret forest hideout lost to history? (Opens in a new window)- about the MSU Tolkien Fellowship, ca. 1967-1982.

Tom Shippey on Waltharius, Beowulf, Tolkien, and Viking Humor (Opens in a new window) [Youtube]

Johnny Samson continues his report as an extra with the first season of LotR: RoP with Diary of a City Guard - Part 11 (Opens in a new window).

Turkish Metal Band Ondolindë Releases ‘The Exile of the Noldor’, Inspired By Middle-Earth (Opens in a new window) [Metalheadzone; Bandcamp (Opens in a new window)]

Ardacraft has Building Middle-earth in Minecraft – presented live to the Tolkien Society in Oxford (Opens in a new window)[Youtube]

doubtfulsea has At Their Pleasure (Opens in a new window).

Stratofanatic has The Most Famous Dragon? (Opens in a new window) And yes, Smaug is in there!

For this edition of the "Roving Ranger" I went through 1,000+ single news items. Curation time: 8½ hrs.

Merchandise & Franchise

Lord of the Rings Online Confirms Public 64-Bit Server Transfer Details, Cut-Off Date (Opens in a new window) [MMORPG] | Lord of the Rings Online continues to test its new raid and clarify server transfer questions (Opens in a new window) [Massively Overpowered]

Tiny Glade (Opens in a new window), a cosy, sandbox city-building game , is inspiring fans to do tiny Bag Ends (Opens in a new window) etc. (Steam)

LotR: Duel for Middle-earth wins gaming trophy in Germany (Opens in a new window). [Ali Baba Spieleclub; BGG (Opens in a new window)]

No, Amazon Prime isn’t cancelling The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power season three over LGBTQ+ diversity (Opens in a new window) [Pink News]

Buffy seems to be returning - post from Sarah Michelle Gellar (Opens in a new window) [Facebook; h/t PhantaNews (Opens in a new window)]

Inter alia & Back in the Day

Warner Bros. Discovery Creates Joint Venture for Film and TV Music Rights (Opens in a new window) [Hollywood Reporter]

Rebecca Yarros sells 12 million copies of her EMPYREAN series in under two years (Opens in a new window) [Wertzone]

Jurassic World: Rebirth has a trailer (Opens in a new window).

Big Five publishers band together in legal challenge against library 'book ban' (Opens in a new window)[Bookseller]

Legendary Broadway and music artist David Edward Byrd has passed away. [Playbill (Opens in a new window); Wikipedia (Opens in a new window); Deadline (Opens in a new window); PrintMag interview (Opens in a new window)]

Fun fact: the lead narrative designer to Shadows of Mordor also was lead writer for Horizon: Zero Dawn (Opens in a new window) (didn’t expect that; Eurogamer)

Yes, George R.R. Martin has his first peer-reviewed publication - in applied physics: Ergodic Lagrangian dynamics in a superhero universe (Opens in a new window).

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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.

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