About Mallorn

Mallorn is the Journal of The Tolkien Society. Starting in 2008 it will be produced twice a year, in the Spring and Autumn. It features essays, commentary, reviews, articles and fiction.

Notes for Contributors

Categories of manuscript

Mallorn considers several different categories of manuscript, and unsolicited material is welcome. Contributors should decide prior to submission to which category of manuscript their contribution belongs and indicate it as such with their contribution.

Letters to the Editor are brief comments on previous content of Mallorn or elsewhere.

Reviews of books, films or other events, typically 1000 words or fewer.

Commentary: scholarly articles, typically 3000 words or fewer. These concern analyses of Tolkien’s work, his precursors, influences and literary legacy, but might also be on other matters which the contributor and editor consider interesting to members of the Tolkien Society. The editor is pleased to discuss proposals for articles.

Fiction: may be in any genre, but will typically be speculative fiction, fantasy or horror, and in any case will be shorter than 3,000 words.

Well, I’m Back: these are very short, opinionated editorials designed to fit one page. They should be between 500 and 600 words long.

Stand-Alone Artwork is considered, either in colour of black-and-white. It is helpful to submit a low-resolution version first – a high-resolution version can be sent once a decision on publication has been made.
Exclusions: Mallorn does not consider poetry or fan-fiction.

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.