The One-hundred and first Roving Ranger

Life and Works

May 18, 1912. Tolkien pays his Oxford Union Library fines (Abre numa nova janela). (One of my absolutely favourite entries with TG - if 1£7/6 is the correct figure then this would be worth more than 100£ today (Abre numa nova janela)😱! The BoE (Abre numa nova janela) concurs, btw!)
May 18, 1972. Exactly sixty years later Tolkien writes Letter 335 (Abre numa nova janela).

Thank you for your most kind letter and for your general interest in my work. I am however now an old man struggling to finish some of his work. Every extra task however small diminishes my chance of ever publishing The Silmarillion. So I hope you will understand why I feel it impossible to spend time making any comments on myself or my works.

May 20, 1969. Tolkien writes Letter 310 (Abre numa nova janela), answering Rayner Unwin’s daughter Camilla on the ‘purpose of life’.
May 21, 1944. Tolkien writes Letter 70 (Abre numa nova janela)to Christopher on his work on LotR (“Gollum continues to develop into a most intriguing character.”)
May 22, 2014. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (Abre numa nova janela) is published.
May 24, 1932. R.W. Chambers (Abre numa nova janela) sends Tolkien an inscribed copy of Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem (Abre numa nova janela).
May 28, 1964. Tree & Leaf (Abre numa nova janela) is first published.
May 29, 1930. Tolkien's "The Oxford (Abre numa nova janela)English School (Abre numa nova janela)" is published in The Oxford Magazine.
May 31, 1944. Tolkien writes Letter 72 (Abre numa nova janela) to Christopher on goings-on in general and LotR (“…I am not really satisfied with the surname Gamgee and shd. change it to Goodchild if I thought you would let me.”)

Tolkien’s 1945 letter to the Catholic Herald on (Abre numa nova janela) ‘the Name of Coventry’ [Catholic Herald] (h/t Andrew Wells; please note scholars Hammond & Scull et al. have stated elsewhere the online version has taken liberties to the original in questions of punctuation, capitalization, and italicization etc.)

All dates are taken from Tolkien Gateway (Abre numa nova janela).

Events & Shows

Magdalen College, Oxford, has a C.S. Lewis exhibition (Abre numa nova janela) right now.

John Howe’s exhibition has found another home, this time Tampere in Finland (Abre numa nova janela).

Will Sherwood is giving a talk in Merton College on May 20: "I am a link in the chain": Victorian Transformations of British Romanticism and their Influence on Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela). Michael G.R. Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela) will give his talk at Merton on June, 3rd: A grandson's reflections on J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Tolkien Days (Abre numa nova janela) of the German Tolkien Society (Abre numa nova janela) are happening, the largest such event in the world, with 11,000+ visitors. [May 24-26; sold out]

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

Scholarship and Fandom

Co-founder to the Grey Havens Group, Kelly Cowling, has passed away (Abre numa nova janela). She and the people in Longmont, Colorado, turned a beautiful vision into reality - philosophy + fantasy. And that name 🤩 I talked to her in 2013 about their work (Abre numa nova janela). Requiescat in pace.

Oronzo Cilli has another post: Tolkien, Shakespeare, and the Stocks Tree in West Wickham. (Abre numa nova janela)

Following the Downings, the Wade Center will have a new director soon (Abre numa nova janela).

John D. Rateliff talks about Annie Brust (Abre numa nova janela)’s Tolkien’s Transformative Women: Art in Triptych (Abre numa nova janela).

Volume 18, Issue 2, of the Journal of Tolkien Research (Abre numa nova janela) is online.

The Tolkien Guide invited the director of the fan film “The Hunt for Gollum”, Chris Bouchard, to talk about recent events (Abre numa nova janela).

The University of Waterloo, CA, has made a photo available (Abre numa nova janela) from their 1968 Tolkien exihibition.

Reddit user u/PotterGandalf117 has finally done a website on his Legendarium family tree (Abre numa nova janela) and offered a new version (8.2) [and it’s done in Excel 😲!)

The Tales after Tolkien Society had its AGM at Kalamazoo (Abre numa nova janela).

Miriam Ellis has a wonderful piece on one the best characters in The Lord of the Rings: Lobelia (Abre numa nova janela).

James Tauber is fighting the good fight by injecting factual information on “The Hunt for Gollum” (Abre numa nova janela) on X (formerly known as Twitter); at the time of writing he had published 160 tweets.

Robin Reid has ‘Calls for Paper’ for Oxonmoot (Abre numa nova janela) and Asexuality and Aromanticism in Tolkien’s Legendarium (Abre numa nova janela).

The fading of the elves: Techno-volunteerism and the disappearance of Tolkien fan fiction archives (Abre numa nova janela) by Dawn Wall-Thumma [TWC]

Jason Fisher (Abre numa nova janela) mentioned that 2022 chemistry Nobel Prize winner Morten Meldal (Abre numa nova janela) was a fan of The Lord of the Rings - please note, I do not condone this kind of behaviour 😇!

I actually played sick during this period because it was so exciting to read this book.

Franchise and Merchandise

An obituary on Bernard Hill (Abre numa nova janela). [The Wertzone] TheOneRing.net celebrated his memory in a live show (Abre numa nova janela), including Bruce Hopkins (‘Gamling’) and Jed Brophy (‘Nori’ etc.) | ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Cast Remembers Bernard Hill: “Don’t Think Anyone Spoke Tolkien’s Words As Great” (Abre numa nova janela) [Deadline] | Dominic Monaghan has a beautiful photo (Abre numa nova janela), shot by Viggo Mortensen, of Bernard Hill [Instagram]

Announcements on the upcoming movie LotR: The Hunt for Gollum (Andy Serkis directing; Jackson, Walsh & Boyens fully involved).

Variety (Abre numa nova janela) | Independent (Abre numa nova janela) | Deadline (Abre numa nova janela) | Hollywood Reporter (Abre numa nova janela); Deadline also has: Peter Jackson, Andy Serkis & Philippa Boyens Explain Why They’re Returning To Middle-Earth (Abre numa nova janela).

And way more importantly, after Amazon left New Zealand for other shores: Revealed: Lord of the Rings movies production hub to be in Wellington (Abre numa nova janela) [RNZ]

Reactions More Lord of the Rings is cynical and unnecessary – Peter Jackson has Gollum too far this time (Abre numa nova janela) [Telegraph] | Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum Fan Film Back Online After Warner Bros. Takedown (Abre numa nova janela) [IGN] | There’s a War Over the LOTR Franchise Between Amazon and WB (Abre numa nova janela) [Movieweb] | Why I'm (even more) worried about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 (Abre numa nova janela) [WinterisComing.net]

Announcements on LotR: The Rings of Power, S2 (Aug 29)

Hollywood Reporter (Abre numa nova janela) | Variety (Abre numa nova janela) | Amazon MGM Studios (Abre numa nova janela) | Deadline (Abre numa nova janela)

Trailer rundown, scene by scene: TORn (Abre numa nova janela), FoF (Abre numa nova janela), NotR (Abre numa nova janela).

Prime Video also announced an upcoming content creator driven talk show (Abre numa nova janela), starting August 1.

A new generation of J.R.R. Tolkien games is coming (Abre numa nova janela) - people with “a 10-year or 20-year plan” for a franchise that is “largely underused”.[Venturebeat]

Thanks go out to Ireland’s Eurovision Song Contest entry to finally reveal Tolkien’s inspiration of the Eye of Sauron (Abre numa nova janela). [iNews UK / sarcasm note!]

Having said this, LEGO is finally doing Barad-dûr (Abre numa nova janela) - for $459.99, €459.99, or £399.99. [The Verge] And happily enough, Brotherhood Workshop are back after about a year with a short parody of Denethor’s Dinner (Abre numa nova janela).

Juniper Books, a provider of custom-made book sets, is offering a new LotR book set (Abre numa nova janela) and/ or jackets on May 21, 2024.

Inter alia & Back in the day

A great Ursula K. Le Guin short story to read for free (Abre numa nova janela). [LitHub]

Star Trek’s reboot film #4 is one of those ‘development hell’ stories: “Chris Pine Was Surprised by New ‘Star Trek 4’ Writer Hire” (Abre numa nova janela) [Variety]

LEGO Star Wars is giving Jar Jar Binks the right treatment in an animated special called ‘Rebuild the Galaxy’ - as Darth Jar Jar (Abre numa nova janela). The Acolyte (Abre numa nova janela) has a trailer. And OREO’s are putting out cookies for the Dark Side - or the Light (Abre numa nova janela)!

A lovely review on Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons (Abre numa nova janela)[Paste Magazine]

Streaming service MAX has the DUNE: Prophecy series coming up this fall, this is the teaser trailer to it (Abre numa nova janela).

Ansible 442 (Abre numa nova janela) has been published - noting, among others, the passing of John Trimble (Abre numa nova janela). He and his wife Bjo organised the letter writing campaign that had the original Star Trek series get a third season - and without this, modern day fandom would not be the same.

An excellent interview with six great science fiction writers: Does Science Fiction Shape the Future? (Abre numa nova janela) [Nautilus]

These people are saying “we finally created the utopia of Neuromancer.” And I look at them and I go, “I don’t think you read Neuromancer. Maybe you just played Cyberpunk 2077.” [Cory Doctorow]

The enshittification (Abre numa nova janela) of the largest online spaces is proceeding ever faster: Reddit has now partnered with OpenAI (Abre numa nova janela) (after already having done that with Google).

If you need to touch base on good or bad ideas.

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As this is 2024 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.