Tolkien Gleanings #10<\/p>\n
* I was sorry to hear of the passing of Professor J. S. Ryan, one of the few scholarly writers on Tolkien who had also studied under Professor Tolkien. I still have his books Tolkien’s View<\/em> and In the Nameless Wood <\/em>on my shelves, and a number of their otherwise-scarce essays proved useful in writing my own recent book. Douglas A. Anderson has assembled a biography<\/a> of Ryan, and he has a Web link to a fuller obituary. <\/p>\n * Newly online in open-access in 2021, the final published version of “Middle America meets Middle-earth: American discussion and readership of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings<\/em>, 1965-1969″<\/a> (2005). The first half being an very in-depth history of the copyright problems with the book in America. Then we eventually get to a section on the first brief ‘craze’ for Tolkien among the more discerning elements of American’s youth, and the response to it…<\/p>\n [even when critics actually looked at the book] “… criticisms very frequently have had less to do with The Lord of the Rings<\/em> itself than with their aversion to the type of book they think it to be, and equally to the type of reader attracted to such books.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n * The venerable U.S. magazine The National Review<\/em> this week reviews the new Tolkien book The Fall of Numenor<\/em><\/a>. Mostly gushy praise + a long potted summary, but it’s useful to have such a summary. <\/p>\n