About Mallorn

Mallorn is the Journal of The Tolkien Society. It is produced twice a year, in the Spring and Autumn. It features essays, commentary, reviews, articles and fiction.

Mallorn - Guide to Authors

Submission - this is overwhelmingly electronic. Although printouts are occasionally considered, prospective authors should be aware that the editorial staff of Mallorn, such as it is, consists of volunteers - retyping and scanning printouts takes a great deal of time we don’t have. If you do not have access to a computer yourself, please persuade a friend or colleague to submit on your behalf as we cannot be relied on to do this work for you.

Categories of Article - Please decide on the category of article you have before you send it. In all cases, please supply a short autobiographical note to append to a contribution if it’s published, as well as full contact details (especially if you are not a member of the Tolkien Society and should like to receive a contributor’s copy after publication).

Letters to the Editor - these may discuss material previously aired in Mallorn, or elsewhere.   If you have a balrog in your bonnet, you might wish to discuss it in this forum. Brevity is much admired.

Reviews - these are welcomed. They may be of books - whether fiction or nonfiction - films, theatre shows, art, neckties, samplers, stained-glass windows, TV, websites, radio, exhibitions, anything of possible interest to readers of Mallorn in the widest sense. It’s a good idea to consult the Editor before submitting a piece. Reviews are typically around 1,000 words in length.

Commentary - this section includes scholarly articles on Tolkien, his life and times, his works, his influence, the works of his colleagues and so on. Unsolicited contributions are welcome. Contributors should pay special attention to the following instructions about references, and should not be surprised if contributions that do not adhere to these strictures are returned unread. If at all possible, references should be given in line, in the text itself - this should almost always apply to works of Tolkien commonly referenced e.g. Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Letters and so on. References to all other material - bibliographies, citations, notes and anything else -  should be given as a numbered superscript referring to a single set of numbered citations to be placed after the text. You can put what you like in such citations, but they should appear sequentially after the text. Repeated mentions of the same material should always refer to the same numbered citation (to avoid repeated usages of 'op cit', 'ibid' and so on, which uses a lot of space). There is no need for separate sections of notes, references and bibliographies. In our experience, copious citation generally correlates inversely with scholarship or insight. Preference is given to articles with as few citations as possible. It is noteworthy that the most important scholarly article of the twentieth century - Einstein’s 1905 paper on special relativity - contained no references. Commentaries are typically around 3,000 words long, including references. Articles very much longer than this will not be considered for serialization.

Poetry - Mallorn welcomes poetry, though poems using proper metres are preferred over free verse. The Editor has a special fondness for alliterative verse and sonnets, but doesn’t much like rhyming couplets. Tolkien’s alliterative verse reading of the defiance of Hurin (in ‘The Lays of Beleriand’) is thrilling. His Tale of Tinuviel in rhyming couplets is for cissies.

Fiction - Mallorn welcomes fiction. This may be of any genre. Please note that fiction using Tolkien’s characters and settings (‘fanfic’) is not considered. Fiction may be up to around 5,000 or 6,000 words.

Well, I’m Back, He Said - this is a back-page item of short non-fiction intended to amuse or inform. Although usually commissioned, unsolicited contributions are welcome. As the item must fit on a page, it will be no longer than 500 words or so and contain few or no references.

Artwork - Mallorn gratefully receives all artwork, whether paintings, drawings or photographs. Black-and-white images are especially welcome. Although Mallorn can and does consider images directly related to Tolkien’s Middle-earth, this is neither mandatory nor necessary. It is advisable to send the Editor low-resolution images (jpeg preferred) in the first instance.

How to prepare your manuscript.

Please note the following, in addition to the guidelines above.

Author information. Please submit a short paragraph (30 words or so) which may be appended to your item, along with full contact details.
Notes, References and Citations. All notes, references, citations and bibliographic material should be arranged as a single section following the text, with items arranged numerically, following numeric superscripts in the text. Any one note can contain a number of citations or other material. References to articles should be given in this form

Surname, X. Y. (1964) A New Method of Citing References, Journal of Bibliographical Information 56: 117-134.

References to materials in books should be given in this form:

Surname, X. Y. A New Method of Citing References, In Trends in Bibliography, ed. X. Y. Surname, Hoople: University of Southern North Dakota (1964) .

Or

Surname, X. Y. The Lost Citation, New York: Random House (1966).

Images: illustration of manuscript items by text figures (diagrams, tables) or especially line drawings is discouraged (although line drawings might be considered as separate works). Please do not place images, tables or display items within the text. They should be sent as separate files and clearly numbered as such.

Transmission: please send all material to mallorn@tolkiensociety.org by email in the form of a rich text (.txt) or Word (.doc) attachment (not Word 2007, please). Hand-written or hard-copy items are no longer considered.

Copyright and Payment

Mallorn does not pay for contributions: contributors retain copyright and acceptance for publication in Mallorn constitutes the grant to Mallorn of a non-exclusive licence to publish.

Copyright for page impressions in Mallorn, and Mallorn itself, is retained by the Tolkien Society.

Other Information

Details on the availability and cost of Back Issues, can be found here.

Individual articles can be ordered by Inter Library Loan from most public or university libraries (ask your librarian) or direct from the British Library. Note that where back issues are available from the Society it may be cheaper to order the whole issue from us.

Use Mallorn as your initial Search term, then click on "request" to the far right of the listing for Mallorn.

You can order a sample copy of the current issue here.