The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, edited by Michael D. C. Drout, was published by Routledge in 2006. A team of 127 Tolkien scholars on 720 pages cover topics of T
J. R. R. Tolkien's bestselling fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings had an initial mixed literary reception. Despite some enthusiastic early reviews from supporters such as W. H. Auden, Iris Murdoch, a
The critic Edmund Wilson attacked Tolkien's work in 1955.
Tom Shippey, like Tolkien an English philologist, helped to pioneer the serious study of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings with his 1982 book The Road to Middle-earth.