The One hundred and twenty-third Roving Ranger

Life and Works

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

“Lines from The Shire. To write poetry was one of Tolkien’s first ambitions” (Abre numa nova janela) [The Critic]

New World Record Set for Sale of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (Abre numa nova janela) [Fine Book & Collector]

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

Events & Shows

Review: Lewis and Tolkien at Taproot Theater (Abre numa nova janela) [Broadway World]

The Arden Theatre (Abre numa nova janela) Hobbit - starting in Philly in April - has a cute trailer [Youtube]

The Mineral Area Fine Arts Academy (Abre numa nova janela) in Park Hills, Missouri, is also putting on the Hobbit (Feb 14-16 (Abre numa nova janela))

Robin Reid has the Tolkien Studies Area, PCA, Program (Abre numa nova janela)(April, New Orleans).

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

Jason Fisher has C.S. Lewis by Joel Heck (Abre numa nova janela).

Cults, Hobbits, a missing student: Is MSU’s secret forest hideout lost to history? (Abre numa nova janela)- about the MSU Tolkien Fellowship, ca. 1967-1982.

Tom Shippey on Waltharius, Beowulf, Tolkien, and Viking Humor (Abre numa nova janela) [Youtube]

Johnny Samson continues his report as an extra with the first season of LotR: RoP with Diary of a City Guard - Part 11 (Abre numa nova janela).

Turkish Metal Band Ondolindë Releases ‘The Exile of the Noldor’, Inspired By Middle-Earth (Abre numa nova janela) [Metalheadzone; Bandcamp (Abre numa nova janela)]

Ardacraft has Building Middle-earth in Minecraft – presented live to the Tolkien Society in Oxford (Abre numa nova janela)[Youtube]

doubtfulsea has At Their Pleasure (Abre numa nova janela).

Stratofanatic has The Most Famous Dragon? (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) [MMORPG] | Lord of the Rings Online continues to test its new raid and clarify server transfer questions (Abre numa nova janela) [Massively Overpowered]

Tiny Glade (Abre numa nova janela), a cosy, sandbox city-building game , is inspiring fans to do tiny Bag Ends (Abre numa nova janela) etc. (Steam)

LotR: Duel for Middle-earth wins gaming trophy in Germany (Abre numa nova janela). [Ali Baba Spieleclub; BGG (Abre numa nova janela)]

No, Amazon Prime isn’t cancelling The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power season three over LGBTQ+ diversity (Abre numa nova janela) [Pink News]

Buffy seems to be returning - post from Sarah Michelle Gellar (Abre numa nova janela) [Facebook; h/t PhantaNews (Abre numa nova janela)]

Inter alia & Back in the Day

Warner Bros. Discovery Creates Joint Venture for Film and TV Music Rights (Abre numa nova janela) [Hollywood Reporter]

Rebecca Yarros sells 12 million copies of her EMPYREAN series in under two years (Abre numa nova janela) [Wertzone]

Jurassic World: Rebirth has a trailer (Abre numa nova janela).

Big Five publishers band together in legal challenge against library 'book ban' (Abre numa nova janela)[Bookseller]

Legendary Broadway and music artist David Edward Byrd has passed away. [Playbill (Abre numa nova janela); Wikipedia (Abre numa nova janela); Deadline (Abre numa nova janela); PrintMag interview (Abre numa nova janela)]

Fun fact: the lead narrative designer to Shadows of Mordor also was lead writer for Horizon: Zero Dawn (Abre numa nova janela) (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 (Abre numa nova janela).

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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.

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