Does anyone have any experience/insight into the extent to which these two books cover reviews of Tolkien's works from newspapers, periodicals and the like?
- Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist by Richard West
- J.R.R. Tolkien: Six Decades of Criticism by Judith Johnson
I found that there is a section in the West book on Book Reviews, though I don't know how long/substantive. Not sure at all about the range of contents in the Johnson book.
I expect I'll buy both of these, though any input would be appreciated as it would help me decide which one to get first!
The 1970 West book has only 10 pages listing book reviews, which are simply title, author, source, with only a handful of the entries annotated. His later supplements will add to that, I suppose, but I don't have all of those.
The 1981 second edition of West's book has a single paragraph analysis of each review or article mentioned, so it is more helpful (specifically for your need, book reviews) than his first edition which is primarily a checklist in this regard.
I picked one early review (Naomi Mitchison, New Statesman and Nation, 1954 review of Fellowship of the Ring) as an example - maybe not the best, but all three have it.
It should be noted that Johnson's focus is on "Critical Response", and so only a very few reviews made it into her volume, if they were by noted individuals with critical opinions rather than generalist book reviews.
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