This may be old news to some people, especially the Russian speakers, but I didn't see an article about it here.
In 1999, Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, wrote The Last Ringbearer, a 270-page take on Lord of the Rings from the point of view of a medic in Mordor's dying armies who is also a "skeptic and a rationalist." In fact, Mordor represents the forces of reason in this retelling of the story. As a Nazgúl (himself a former mathematician) explains, Mordor is "the little oasis of Reason in which your light-minded civilization had so comfortably nestled." Barad-dur is "that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic."
The story has been newly translated and is available in free PDF form -- in English and the original Russian. There's a recent review from Salon as well.
Yes, but...
I think that's a little misleading, since the Philosophical Transactions started in 1665.
The Philosophical Transactions had volume numbers that were quite regular, either annual or biannual, depending on the time period. The Society's website implies that they were printed as volumes, but they were quarterly.
The first 50 years of the Proceedings, before it got that name, had quite irregular volume numbers, but I would be hesitant to draw publishing conclusions from that.
I think that there's some survivorship bias, too. Wikipedia claims that there were 1000 journals in the 1700s, but they didn't survive. So enlightenment might be a better answer than post-enlightenment.
EDIT: the Royal Society's website contains issue numbers, but its organization implies that volumes were published at once.
Thanks! I didn't realize that there were that many or that the Philosophical Transactions was that regular. And I had no idea that there were that many early journals.