The One-hundred and first Roving Ranger

Life and Works

May 18, 1912. Tolkien pays his Oxford Union Library fines (Opens in a new window). (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 (Opens in a new window)😱! The BoE (Opens in a new window) concurs, btw!)
May 18, 1972. Exactly sixty years later Tolkien writes Letter 335 (Opens in a new window).

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 (Opens in a new window), answering Rayner Unwin’s daughter Camilla on the ‘purpose of life’.
May 21, 1944. Tolkien writes Letter 70 (Opens in a new window)to Christopher on his work on LotR (“Gollum continues to develop into a most intriguing character.”)
May 22, 2014. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (Opens in a new window) is published.
May 24, 1932. R.W. Chambers (Opens in a new window) sends Tolkien an inscribed copy of Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem (Opens in a new window).
May 28, 1964. Tree & Leaf (Opens in a new window) is first published.
May 29, 1930. Tolkien's "The Oxford (Opens in a new window)English School (Opens in a new window)" is published in The Oxford Magazine.
May 31, 1944. Tolkien writes Letter 72 (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window) ‘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 (Opens in a new window).

Events & Shows

Magdalen College, Oxford, has a C.S. Lewis exhibition (Opens in a new window) right now.

John Howe’s exhibition has found another home, this time Tampere in Finland (Opens in a new window).

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 (Opens in a new window). Michael G.R. Tolkien (Opens in a new window) will give his talk at Merton on June, 3rd: A grandson's reflections on J.R.R. Tolkien.

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

For all event (Opens in a new window)s (Opens in a new window) check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Opens in a new window) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Opens in a new window).

Scholarship and Fandom

Co-founder to the Grey Havens Group, Kelly Cowling, has passed away (Opens in a new window). 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 (Opens in a new window). Requiescat in pace.

Oronzo Cilli has another post: Tolkien, Shakespeare, and the Stocks Tree in West Wickham. (Opens in a new window)

Following the Downings, the Wade Center will have a new director soon (Opens in a new window).

John D. Rateliff talks about Annie Brust (Opens in a new window)’s Tolkien’s Transformative Women: Art in Triptych (Opens in a new window).

Volume 18, Issue 2, of the Journal of Tolkien Research (Opens in a new window) is online.

The Tolkien Guide invited the director of the fan film “The Hunt for Gollum”, Chris Bouchard, to talk about recent events (Opens in a new window).

The University of Waterloo, CA, has made a photo available (Opens in a new window) from their 1968 Tolkien exihibition.

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

The Tales after Tolkien Society had its AGM at Kalamazoo (Opens in a new window).

Miriam Ellis has a wonderful piece on one the best characters in The Lord of the Rings: Lobelia (Opens in a new window).

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

Robin Reid has ‘Calls for Paper’ for Oxonmoot (Opens in a new window) and Asexuality and Aromanticism in Tolkien’s Legendarium (Opens in a new window).

The fading of the elves: Techno-volunteerism and the disappearance of Tolkien fan fiction archives (Opens in a new window) by Dawn Wall-Thumma [TWC]

Jason Fisher (Opens in a new window) mentioned that 2022 chemistry Nobel Prize winner Morten Meldal (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window). [The Wertzone] TheOneRing.net celebrated his memory in a live show (Opens in a new window), 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” (Opens in a new window) [Deadline] | Dominic Monaghan has a beautiful photo (Opens in a new window), 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 (Opens in a new window) | Independent (Opens in a new window) | Deadline (Opens in a new window) | Hollywood Reporter (Opens in a new window); Deadline also has: Peter Jackson, Andy Serkis & Philippa Boyens Explain Why They’re Returning To Middle-Earth (Opens in a new window).

And way more importantly, after Amazon left New Zealand for other shores: Revealed: Lord of the Rings movies production hub to be in Wellington (Opens in a new window) [RNZ]

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

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

Hollywood Reporter (Opens in a new window) | Variety (Opens in a new window) | Amazon MGM Studios (Opens in a new window) | Deadline (Opens in a new window)

Trailer rundown, scene by scene: TORn (Opens in a new window), FoF (Opens in a new window), NotR (Opens in a new window).

Prime Video also announced an upcoming content creator driven talk show (Opens in a new window), starting August 1.

A new generation of J.R.R. Tolkien games is coming (Opens in a new window) - 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 (Opens in a new window). [iNews UK / sarcasm note!]

Having said this, LEGO is finally doing Barad-dûr (Opens in a new window) - 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 (Opens in a new window).

Juniper Books, a provider of custom-made book sets, is offering a new LotR book set (Opens in a new window) 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 (Opens in a new window). [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” (Opens in a new window) [Variety]

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

A lovely review on Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons (Opens in a new window)[Paste Magazine]

Streaming service MAX has the DUNE: Prophecy series coming up this fall, this is the teaser trailer to it (Opens in a new window).

Ansible 442 (Opens in a new window) has been published - noting, among others, the passing of John Trimble (Opens in a new window). 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? (Opens in a new window) [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 (Opens in a new window) of the largest online spaces is proceeding ever faster: Reddit has now partnered with OpenAI (Opens in a new window) (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.