J.R.R. Tolkien

Peter Hunt is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff University, UK, where he was the first specialist in Children's Literature to be appointed full Professor of English in a British university. He has written or edited 26 books and over 150 articles on children's literature. In 1995 the International Society for the Fantastic in the Arts presented him with their Distinguished Scholarship Award, and in 2003 he was awarded the Brothers Grimm Award for services to children's literature, from the International Institute for Children's Literature, Osaka, Japan.

• Series Editor's PrefaceAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction; Peter Hunt1. The Hobbit, the Tale, Children's Literature, and the Critics; Keith O'Sullivan2. Sources and Successors; Maria Sachiko Cecire3. The Pastoral Impulse and the Turn to the Future in The Hobbit and Interwar Children's Fiction; Hazel Sheekey Bird4. Tolkien and the Traditional Dragon Tale: An Examination of The Hobbit; C.W.Sullivan III5. Tolkien's Language; Louise Joy6. There and Back Again: The Gendered Journey of Tolkien's Hobbits; Zoe Jaques7. Tolkien and Worldbuilding; Catherine Butler8. A Topoanalytical Reading of Landscapes in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit; Jane Suzanne Carroll9. Tolkien and Trees; Shelley Saguaro and Deborah Cogan Thacker10. From Illustration to Film: Visual Narratives and Target Audiences; Kate HarveyFurther ReadingIndex.

"This Casebook of approaches to Tolkien is a fine introduction to the breadth and concerns of Tolkien criticism for undergraduate readers, yet advances some new ideas that will intrigue the scholar. The essays are uniformly readable and deal with perennially interesting topics: gender, film, ecology, and children's and young adult books that influenced or were influenced by Tolkien's works." - Janet B Croft, University of Oklahoma Libraries, USA "This wide-ranging collection of essays has much to offer students of fantasy, children's literature, film, illustration, and anyone who has a deep interest in Tolkien's writings. Contributors analyse the puzzlement that has been evident in surrounding critical commentary to date and, using material from his letters, essays, and his books themselves, explore Tolkien's art from a variety of illuminating perspectives." - Susan Hancock, University of Roehampton, UK