So, yesterday I was in Half Price Books, looking to see if they had any old issues of DRAGON magazine (for future reference, to possibly fill out some gaps in my collection). They didn't, but when looking around I came across a book which provides yet another piece of evidence that Tolkien's gained mainstream literary acceptance.
The book in question is CHAMBERS DICTIONARY OF LITERARY CHARACTERS [2004], which has thousands of alphabetical entries for fictional characters, one per character. Out of curiosity, I looked up several Tolkien names, and was pleasantly surprised to find entries for not just "Baggins, Bilbo" and "Baggins, Frodo" but also Gandalf, Gollum, Aragorn, Sam, and Thorin (as well as "Smeagol: see Gollum" and "Strider: see Aragorn"). They don't seem to have included anyone from THE SILMARILLION (at least Feanor, Beren, & Luthien didn't turn up in a quick search), but Thorin made the cut, showing that not just THE LORD OF THE RINGS but also THE HOBBIT was included.
We progress. Step by step, we definitely progress.
--JDR
I think Tolkien has a head start over other fantasy writers in getting literary acceptance because he was himself an academic.
ReplyDeleteYou know what I found on remainder at B&N? There was the 3 volume Lee illustrated LOTR, for $27 (I bought two). They had one copy left of the single volume Lee illustrated LOTR for $14.98. I bought it. And they had the 3rd edition boxed set for $14.98. I bought that one too.
ReplyDeleteI gave one set of the illustrated edition to my son and kept one for myself. The others are all for ME!
I have never seen any Tolkien on remainder, anywhere. They must have had some huge print runs on these to have them in the bargain books.