From the back cover: This books includes nearly four decades' worth of intelligent, lively, and controversial Tolkien commentary from some of the major literary figures of our time. Here you will find W. H. Auden praising The Hobbit as "one of the best children's stories of this century"; Edmund Wilson deriding The Lord of the Rings as "an overgrown fairy story"; and critques by C. S. Lewis in the 1950s, Ursula K. Le Guin in the 70s, and Isaac Asimov in the 80s. What emerges from these twelve provocative commentaries is not only a colorful survey of American and British literary and cultural tastes over several generations, but a multifaceted tribute to one man and his imagination that is sure to enhance and deepen a reader's understanding of Tolkien's two most famous works.