This TrueType-font was created in 1996-97 by Morten Bek. The reason I called it a beta is to give you all a chance to send me any complaints, corrections, suggestions, or questions before the final is released.
About the supported characters: The English alphabet is fully supported plus th, dh and sh (which I put where I found it most fitting: under thorn, eth and cedilla respectively). You can find them with the Character Map if you're lost.
The dwarven & (ampersand) is also supported. Finally, I started making a bunch of characters including all the numbers and ,.;:-_!"#$%/()=?+`^~*<>\@'
Many of these aren't (of course) very Tolkienish, and most of them won't be useful for you at all.