Tolkien's 'The Return Of The Ring' – 9th of June Release

In two days time, The Return of the Ring: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Conference 2012 will be released, to the delight of many.

Edited by Lynn Forest-Hill, and published by Luna Press Publishing, The Return of the Ring is a two-volume collection of papers presented at the Tolkien Society’s conference of the same name held at Loughborough University 16–20 August 2012 to mark the 75^thanniversary of the publication of The Hobbit.

Few twentieth-century authors can compete with J.R.R. Tolkien. More than three-quarters of a century after the publication of The Hobbit in 1937, his works continue to captivate millions of readers across the world. As a collection of papers delivered in 2012 at the Tolkien Society’s international conference of the same name, The Return of the Ring is representative of the wide and varied responses Tolkien’s works have generated over the decades. The first volume focuses primarily on Tolkien’s life, examining the influence of war, philosophy, and religion on his mythology. The second volume is much more diverse, covering themes from medievalism and romanticism through to fantasy and modernity. With contributions from the likes of John Garth, Colin Duriez, Ronald Hutton, and Janet Brennan Croft, The Return of the Ring: Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Conference 2012 is essential reading for scholars and casual readers alike.

“Return of the Ring: Celebrating Tolkien in 2012” was a five-day conference organised by the Tolkien Society to mark the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit. Held at Loughborough University 16–20 August 2012, it brought together a unique mixture of fun, fandom and scholarship. In addition to the excellent selection of scholars featured in these proceedings, there were singers, re-enactors, artists, performers, figures from fandom and Tolkien’s grandson. With around 500 delegates from across the globe, Return of the Ring was one of the largest Tolkien-specific events ever held and followed on from the Tolkien Society’s earlier conferences in 1992 and 2005, which respectively marked the centenary of Tolkien’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Lord of the Rings.

All profits will be donated to Tolkien to the World. This was founded by the Tolkien Society in 2003 as a programme to provide the works of J.R.R. Tolkien to schools and libraries in the less-developed world.

If you order before Thursday 9 June, you can take advantage of the special discount price of £20 for both volumes of The Return of the Ring.

Here are the contributors who made these volumes possible:

Volume 1

• “Foreword” – Shaun Gunner
• “Introduction” – Lynn Forest-Hill
• BIOGRAPHY
  • “Tolkien’s Birmingham” – Robert S. Blackham
  • “J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘second father’ Fr. Francis Morgan and other non-canonical influences” – José Manuel Ferrández Bru
  • “Tolkien’s Oxford” – Robert S. Blackham
  • “J.R.R. Tolkien and the origins of the Inklings” – Colin Duriez
• WAR AND ITS EFFECTS
  • “Robert Quilter Gilson, T.C.B.S.: A brief life in letters” – John Garth
  • “Tolkien: the War Years” – Robert S. Blackham
  • “Sauron Revealed” – LeiLani Hinds
  • “Clean Earth to Till:A Tolkienian Vision of War” – Anna E. Thayer (née Slack)
  • “The Importance of Home in the Middle-earth Legendarium” – Sara Brown
• PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
  • “Tolkien versus the history of philosophy” – Franco Manni
  • “Tolkien’s Boethius, Alfred’s Boethius” – Gerard Hynes
  • “Teaching Leadership and Ethics through Tolkien” – Laura Miller-Purrenhage
• RELIGION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
  • “Tolkien – Pagan or Christian? A proposal for a ‘new’ synthetic approach” – Claudio A. Testi
  • “A Latter-day Saint reading of Tolkien” – James D. Holt
  • “Tolkien’s Magic” – Ronald Hutton
• THE MYTHIC DIMENSION
  • “Cyclic cataclysms, Semitic stereotypes and religious reforms: a classicist’s Númenor” – Pamina Fernández Camacho
  • “From 2012 AD to Atlantis and Back Again – Tolkien’s Circular Journey in Time” – Xavier de la Huerga
  • “The Notion Club Papers: A Summary” – David Doughan
  • “Myth-Making: How J. R. R. Tolkien Adapted Mythopoeia from Old English” – Zachary A. Rhone
  • “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Mythopoeia and Familiarisation of Myth: Hobbits as Mediators of Myth in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings” – Jyrki Korpua
  • “White riders and new world orders: Nature and technology in Theodor Storm’s Der Schimmelreiter and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings” – Larissa Budde

Volume 2

• “Introduction” – Lynn Forest-Hill
• MEDIEVALISM
  • “Tolkienesque Transformations: Post-Celticism and Possessiveness in ‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun’” – Yoko Hemmi
  • “Tolkien’s Devices: The Heraldry of Middle-earth” – Jamie McGregor
  • “Tolkien and the Gothic” – Nick Groom
  • “Frodo and Faramir: Mirrors of Chivalry” – Constance G.J. Wagner
• FANTASY
  • “An Old Light Rekindled: Tolkien’s Influence on Fantasy” – Anna E. Thayer (née Slack)
  • “‘In the memory of old wives’: Old Tales and Fairy-stories in Middle-earth” – Troels Forchhammer
• DIVERSITY
  • “Tolkien and Nonsense” – Maureen F. Mann
  • “Stars Above a Dark Tor: Tolkien and Romanticism” – Anna E. Thayer (née Slack)
  • “The Ainulindale and Tolkien’s Approach to Modernity” – Reuven Naveh
  • “Tolkien, the Russians and Industrialisation” – Jim Clarke
  • “Legal bother: Law and related matters in The Hobbit – Murray Smith
  • “Tolkien’s Faërian Drama: Origins and Valedictions” – Janet Brennan Croft
  • “Tolkien’s women of Middle-earth” – Chris Barclay
  • “Colours in Tolkien” – Christopher Kreuzer
  • “Thirty Years of Tolkien Fandom” – Nancy Martsch