Although Tolkien is best known for his formative influence on the modern fantasy genre through The Lord of the Rings (though we here at the Silmarillion Writers' Guild clearly think the rest of the legendarium is pretty special too!), his impact on the field of Anglo-Saxon studies was just as noteworthy. His 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" transformed how the Old English poem Beowulf was read and understood by scholars. It is cited even today in Beowulf scholarship and included in many contemporary volumes of Beowulf criticism for its foundational role in how the field would evolve over the next eight-plus decades.

But for all its importance, "Monsters and the Critics" doesn't tend to be included in volumes of Tolkien's popular works—not entirely unexpected, given that it is an academic (though highly accessible) lecture-turned-essay. In this month's A Sense of History column, Simon J. Cook gives "Monsters" its due as a work that reveals something of how a people looks back in history and finds they have forgotten what they know.

"Monsters" includes one of my favorite passages from all of Tolkien's writing: an extended metaphor about a man who constructs a tower from old ruins and endures the scrutiny and scorn of his compatriots who wonder why he'd do such a thing—"But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea." Simon makes the case that the sea in this metaphor is the forgotten knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon people: just what lies beyond the shoreless sea alluded to in Beowulf, giving the poem its tone "both poignant and remote" and "weighted with regret."

Of course, fans of Tolkien's work—especially his First Age writings—identify this same sense of nostalgic loss for a distant, partially glimpsed past. And so we see Beleriand in Beowulf.

You can read Simon J. Cook's column "Beleriand in Beowulf" here.

(On the subject of Tolkien's inspirations, be sure to check out our new challenge Dip the Ladle, and remember that you can reply to this email to request a prompt.)

SWG News

New Challenge: Allusive
Literature and art constantly refer back to each other using allusions, and this month's prompts are inspired by allusions to literature, myth, art, and history.

Cultus Dispatches: "The Rings of Power" Is a Ripple (So Far)
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data for 2025 shows that "The Rings of Power" TV series has not had the same impact on the fandom as the film trilogies did ... so far.

New Challenge: Building Middle-earth
Let global architecture be your inspiration in this challenge, where you will work with a prompts that are architectural styles, locations in Arda, or both.

Instadrabbling Sessions for July, August, and September
Instadrabbling continues on the first Saturday of each month on our Discord server.

Occasional Bug on the SWG Archive

For some months now, we have been experiencing a bug related to one of the modules we use on the SWG archive. While we made some changes that have much reduced the appearance of this bug, it wriggled out of the woodwork again this week.

What the bug looks like: When accessing a page with /user/ in the web address, you will be taken to a white page that says only, "The website encountered an unexpected error."

How to squash the bug: Contact the mods and let us know. If you have this email open, just hit Reply! We don't need any further information than "it's happening again." It takes about thirty seconds for us to temporarily fix the issue, but since the bug will persist on all /user/ pages until we do this (including login and registration pages), we appreciate knowing as soon as it begins happening.

We have figured out a fix that should exterminate the bug permanently, but due to mod availability, we won't be able to get it in place for at least a week. In the meantime, to all of you who report errors when you find them on the site, thank you!

New Fanworks

Explain This by Elrond's Library [Writing]

Melkor demands an account of Mairon’s failures.

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Message in a Bottle by StarSpray [Writing]

Over the course of his very long life he had found a handful of messages in bottles, but it had been a very long time. So when he found the glass bottle on his little stretch of pebbly beach, he picked it up with the intention of tossing it into his recycling. But it wasn’t, he found, just another beer bottle.

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Nerdanel/Nienna moodboard by Independence1776 [Artwork]

A Nerdanel/Nienna moodboard.

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Updated Fanworks

The Stars of Home by Idrils Scribe [Writing]

Elrohir has been found after his long abduction by the Black Númenóreans of Umbar. He comes home to Rivendell, but all is not well: the Elf-child that was taken is now a Man grown. War and darkness have left Elrohir deeply scarred, and even at home there is danger...

An alternate universe for the Under Strange Stars series, in which Elrohir goes with Glorfindel instead of running away from him after the events of Under Strange Stars. This story can be enjoyed without having read the original.

Many thanks to Grundy and Marchwriter for their excellent beta-reading and brainstorming.

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A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray [Writing]

When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.

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From That Rubble by StarSpray [Writing]

Fëanor shrugged, studying the contents of his wine glass. “Something must be done about that house. It will fall down eventually.”
“It does not follow that it must be you that tears it down single-handedly. Are you sure you do not want help?”
“It’s not as though I have much else to do. I need to build something new there,” he said after a few moments. “To do that, I must first clear away the old and broken things.”

Decades out of Mandos, too many things in Fëanor's life remain broken. He can't do anything except wait for his sons to come to him, but he can do something about the old and crumbling house where they once lived. 

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Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael [Writing]

This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously thought on the matter who the Ainur are, who Eru is, how he matches our own religious pantheon, and this has been conducted after serious research of many esoteric teachings of our own planet's heritage.

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