Quote:I have a big question for another thread: please tell us more about the Tolkien Society.
The Tolkien Society was founded in 1969 in UK (yep, Tolkien was alive, still!) to honour the Professor's works; from that date onwards, many Tolkien Societies were founded around the world, usually started by a member of the TS (you can be a member of the original TS even if you live in the other side of the world), as well as other kind of societies related to Tolkien’s works, as is The Mythopoeic Society.
They have the blessings of the Tolkien Estate and until a few years back, Priscilla Tolkien (his daughter) used to attend the annual meetings. Christopher Tolkien himself has some kind of contact with them too, usually by mail (and usually, too, with the UK Tolkien Society).
In each country (if they are enough members, that is), there are several “smials”, which are the local cells, where members of a city are gathered. Smials use to celebrate one or two reunions, monthly, and once or twice a year all the smials hold a large reunion were all the members of a country meet together. Depending of each TS, they are more active or not, have their own publications, magazines and journals, etc.
As for their activities, they study Tolkien’s works, languages, read together and analize a chapter of a book, write essays or fanfics (“good” fanfics) etc. There is a place for games too, such as Live role-plays (yay, they are *very* funny), gymkhanas, Trivial Tolkien, or ateliers where people can learn to make their own chainmail or clothes or learn swordplay/archery, etc. Many times (depending, again, of how “serious” the local TS is) they are contacted by press or radio or TV when they are doing reportages about Tolkien and his works.
I must to say that, in the last years, many TS have changed...; I say this because, thanks *ahem* to the movies, a large number of “Tolkien fans” *cough* joined them and, as it happened to, shall we say, Tolkien email lists or RPG boards, they messed them, more interested to figure out to be Arwen and to organize parties where they would be dressed as Legolas, than anything else. Or they messed some smials of some TS.
Yet, we do hope it will pass, sooner or later... even if some members claim that it is too late and, tired, have left their TS :(
Btw, this year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the complete publication of LOTR (ROTK was published on October 20th 1955).
The Tolkien Society website is here. The list of smials and other societies is not very updated, but mainly because they don't provide info about (France is a good example, its website must be the worse of all the TS sites).
Thank you Nolen. I'm really fascinated by this! I know I do not know enough to belong to any official society, but one day I will, and then I will see about it.
But, Ithiloth, don't say you don't know enough to belong to any TS. It is not require to know a lot, in fact, a lot of members have only read The Hobbit and LOTR (and tried to read The Silmarillion and gave up :P). In the same way, any smial work different; some of them are more movie-versed, others are book-versed, or games-versed, etc... In my experience, and for what I know and have been told, there is no scholar-versed smial, so, don't worry for that.
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