Tolkien Vs. The Critics In 1954

meganthom writes "The BBC is running a story about how the critics viewed The Fellowship of the Ring, which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its publication... One critic's view: 'To have created so enthralling an epic-romance, with its own mythology, with such diversity of scene and character, such imaginative largess in invention and description, and such supernatural meaning underlying the wealth of incident is a most remarkable feat.' One of the most insightful of all the comments at the time was provided by the Spectator's Mr. Hughes, who said, 'I think we should be well advised to remember that what we have before us now is the first volume of a larger work... and be willing to suspend judgement... until we have seen the whole... The pleasure to be derived from this first volume is a pleasure not to be missed.'"

Comments

LOTR winning "Book of the Century"...

[tcopeland]

...in 1997 had more lively responses:

In January 1997, reporter Susan Jeffreys of the (London) Sunday Times informed a colleague that J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy "The Lord of the Rings" had been voted the greatest book of the 20th century in a readers' poll conducted by Britain's Channel 4 and the Waterstone's bookstore chain. Her colleague responded: "Oh hell! Has it? Oh my God. Dear oh dear. Dear oh dear oh dear."

More on that here.

communist critiscism of LOTR

[kyknos.org]

here in czech republic, the LOTR was criticized for being an allegory of war of Evil Capitallist Imperialistic West (Gondor, Elves etc...) against a working class of Good communist Mordor (but because it was a bad book from the west it was trying to depict good as evil and vice versa). I am not kidding. I have somewhere an article from Rude Pravo (Red Justice, leading newspapers of communist Czechoslovakia) where is detailed list of what nation and character from LOTR corresponds with what character and nation in the Real World.