The Tolkien Society

• 1. Introduction

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  The Tolkien Society began not with a grand ceremony, but with a personal column buried in the pages of the New Statesman on the 7th of November 1969. The author behind it wrote under the pseudonym Belladonna Took, inviting anyone interested to write to an address in London's NW1 postal district. That writer was Vera Chapman, and the society she was quietly calling into existence would eventually hold the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's work as a matter of charitable purpose. How did a letters column in a fanzine turn into an institution with a peer-reviewed journal, blue plaques on Birmingham buildings, and a graveside memorial service in Oxford? And what does it say about Tolkien's work that it inspired not just readers, but scholars, archivists, and a great-grandson who still remembers the campfires?

• 2. A Society Takes Shape

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  Vera Chapman's first announcement appeared in the November 1969 issue of The Middle Earthworm, a fanzine aimed largely at British members of the Tolkien Society of America. The New Statesman column followed on the 7th of November, and because that issue would have reached newsstands a day before its cover date, the society's informal beginning has been placed at Thursday the 6th of November 1969.

  Within weeks, Chapman published Belladonna's Broadsheet. After three issues it gave way to The Mallorn in October 1970, conceived as a quarterly publication. Alongside it came The Tolkien Society Bulletin, planned on a six-weekly schedule. The bulletin went through several incarnations: it became Anduril in January 1972, then Henneth Annun after three issues, then finally Amon Hen from its second number onwards, reportedly for no particular reason. Both Amon Hen and Mallorn are still published today.

  The society's first formal gathering, hosted by the Hobbit Society of University College London on the 29th of January 1970, put questions of name and governance on the table. A constitution was drafted and considered at a general meeting on the 20th of November 1970, but rejected. The society did not become a legal entity until a constitution was ratified on the 15th of January 1972, and charitable status in England and Wales followed on the 7th of July 1977. Those five years between informal announcement and legal standing shaped an organisation built on enthusiasm first and paperwork second.

• 3. Tolkien Himself

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  Chapman first wrote to J. R. R. Tolkien on behalf of the society at the suggestion of Joy Hill, who had served as Tolkien's secretary through the 1960s. Her letter, dated the 1st of May 1970, introduced the society and set out its aims.

  The relationship warmed quickly. When Tolkien was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours, the society sent him a telegram on his eightieth birthday on the 3rd of January 1972, along with a gift of tobacco packed in a green china jar and a congratulatory note. Tolkien replied on the 6th of February, thanking them.

  Later that year, on the 27th of June, Chapman met Tolkien in person at a sherry party hosted by his publishers, Allen and Unwin. Tolkien agreed to become the society's honorary president. He died the following year. Chapman then approached his son Christopher, who wrote back with an unusual suggestion: that his father should remain president in perpetuity. The Annual General Meeting of 1974 agreed to that arrangement. Tolkien has held the honorary presidency ever since.

• 4. Oxonmoot and the Calendar

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  The question that sparked Oxonmoot appeared in the December 1973 issue of the fanzine Nazgul. Contributor John Abbot asked whether anyone liked the idea of an Oxford Moot that year. The 1974 AGM approved it, and the first Oxonmoot met at The Welsh Pony on George Street, Oxford, between the 13th and the 15th of September 1974.

  Oxonmoot has been held in an Oxford college every year since 1991, timed to fall near Hobbit Day on the 22nd of September, the shared birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Around two hundred people attend, taking in academic lectures, quizzes, and costuming events. The weekend closes with a memorial service called Enyalie at Tolkien's grave in Wolvercote cemetery.

  Oxonmoot is now the largest of the society's five annual events. The others are the Birthday Toast on the 3rd of January, Tolkien Reading Day on the 25th of March, the AGM and Springmoot held over a weekend in April, and the summer Seminar. Tolkien Reading Day was proposed by Sean Kirst, a journalist at the Post-Standard in Syracuse, New York, in 2002. The first one took place on the 25th of March 2003. The date marks the downfall of Sauron in Tolkien's own chronology, and the theme changes each year by committee vote.

  The more informal Summermoot ran on an irregular basis through the 1980s and 1990s, occasionally hosted by Joanna Tolkien and Hugh Baker at their farm in Wales. Their son Royd Tolkien, who is also Tolkien's great-grandson, has described guests camping in the field, sword fighting, and setting off homemade fireworks around huge campfires. He has said that his first awareness of his great-grandfather's legacy came from those gatherings.

• 5. Publications and Scholarship

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  Membership of the Tolkien Society comes with a subscription to both Amon Hen and Mallorn. Amon Hen is published six times a year; Mallorn once. Mallorn tends toward the scholarly end of the range, and prominent contributors have included Christopher Tolkien, Priscilla Tolkien, and the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey.

  Quettar was the bulletin of the society's Linguistic Fellowship from 1980 to 1995, producing forty-nine issues before closing. Local groups affiliated with the society are called smials, borrowing the hobbit-holes terminology from The Lord of the Rings. One smial at the University of Cambridge, known as both the Cambridge Tolkien Society and Minas Tirith, has published the open-access journal Anor since the 1980s.

  The society has also produced one-off publications, including the proceedings of its 1992 and 2005 conferences, and its Peter Roe series publishes seminar proceedings and talks from guest speakers on an irregular basis. The Tolkien Society Awards, established in 2014, recognise excellence in scholarship and fandom each year. Past recipients include Christopher Tolkien, Tom Shippey, Dimitra Fimi, John Garth, and the artist Jenny Dolfen.

• 6. Marking the Places

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  The Tolkien Society has funded blue plaques at several Birmingham addresses connected to Tolkien's life. Among them is Sarehole Mill, near one of Tolkien's childhood homes, which the society identified as the inspiration behind Ted Sandyman's mill in The Lord of the Rings. In 2015, the society and Birmingham Museums Trust announced a partnership to promote the mill and its connection to Tolkien.

  Other plaques mark 4 Highfield Road, where Tolkien lived between January 1910 and autumn 1911, and the Plough and Harrow Hotel, where he stayed with his new wife Edith on the 3rd of June 1916 shortly before leaving for war service in France. A plaque also marks 2 Darnley Road in Leeds, the family home between the 17th of March 1924 and the 4th of January 1926.

  The 1992 Centenary Conference, organised jointly with the Mythopoeic Society at Keble College, Oxford, went beyond plaques. A bench was installed beside the River Cherwell in Oxford University Parks, with an accompanying plaque, and two trees were planted representing Telperion and Laurelin from The Silmarillion. The Tolkien Society Archive holds books, journals, press clippings, and other ephemera that might not otherwise have been preserved. Its Tolkien to the World programme ships Tolkien's principal works to schools and libraries around the world, working toward its stated aim of making those books universally accessible.