Excerpts from Mitgang, Herbert. “Behind the Best Sellers: J.R.R. Tolkien.” New York Times (October 2 1977), 48. “After Professor Tolkien’s death at 81, international readers hoped that Middle-earth would somehow continue to live. The author’s son, Christopher, a World… Read More
Excerpts from “J.R.R. Tolkien Dead at 81; Wrote ‘Lord of the Rings’.” New York Times (September 3 1973), 18. “It did anything but [flop]. It was just four years later [1965], printed in paperback in this country by Ballantine… Read More
Excerpts from: Curtis, Antony. “Remembering Tolkien and Lewis.” British Book News (June 1977), 429-30. “Another time I arrived [as a student to a class with C.S. Lewis] before the others and he was staring out of the window… Read More
Excerpts from: Cater, William. “More and More People are Getting the J.R.R. Tolkien Habit.” Los Angeles Times (April 9, 1972), 14, 18. And “future students of Norse legend or early English poetry (the subjects of Tolkien’s academic life) will… Read More
Excerpts from Foster, William. “An Early History of the Hobbits.” Edinburgh Scotsman (February 5, 1972). “It [Allen and Unwin] is almost monopolised by Tolkien, running a Tolkien light industry from its faded, dusty premises in Museum Street, sending an… Read More
Excerpts from: Plimmer, Charlotte, and Denis Plimmer. “The Man Who Understands Hobbits.” London Daily Telegraph Magazine (March 22 1968), 31-32, 35. “‘Spiders,’ observed Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, cradling the word with the same affection that he cradled the pipe in… Read More
Excerpts from: Henry Resnick, “An Interview with Tolkien [March 2, 1966],” Niekas No. 18 (Late Spring 1967). “Well, I think it’s been building up [popularity of Tolkien’s books], you know; I think it’s an error to say that it… Read More
An edited transcript of remarks at the December 1966 TSA meeting by Clyde S Kilby, Niekas, volume 19, 1968. I might say first that there is a very small manuscript called “Mr. Bliss” that I think may now… Read More
From: J.R.R. Tolkien, “Tolkien on Tolkien,” Diplomat (October 1966): 39. This business began so far back that it might be said to have begun at birth. Somewhere about six years old I tried to write some verses on… Read More
To celebrate what would’ve been J.R.R. Tolkien’s 123rd birthday on January 3 of this year, I posted the following at The Imaginative Conservative. As a person who has written on Tolkien for almost fifteen years and read Tolkien… Read More
Stormfields 