The Fellowship of the Ring reviewed: ‘epic romance’ – archive, 1954
The Fellowship of the Ring, By JRR Tolkien. Allen and Unwin Pp 423 21s.
This is the first volume of a trilogy in which Mr Tolkien is to tell the history of the ‘The War of the Ring.’ This magic ring, originally forged by Sauron, the Lord of Darkness, was later lost and, by what seemed a strange chance, found by Bilbo, one of those dwellers of the Middle-earth called Hobbits of whom Mr Tolkien has written in an earlier book. It was entrusted by him to his nephew Frodo. But the Dark Lord now knew of its whereabouts and his creatures, the Black Riders, are sent out to recover it. Frodo is warned by the wizard Gandalf to leave his home in the Shire, taking the devilish Ring of Power with him. He does so with a few trusted friends and this volume recounts the awful hazards of his journey with the hell-hounds on his heels and other hostile beings, such as the Orcs menacing him, but also now, in his sorest need, those who served the Light came to his aid with their own white magic.
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. Mr Tolkien is one of those born storytellers who makes his readers as eager as wide-eyed children for more. His style, in prose and verse, is fresh and fluent and equally apt to the expression of unearthly beauty, homely humour, or stark horror.
The Hobbit
Kenneth RichmondThe Observer, 28 November 1937
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (Allen and Unwin. 7s, 6d, net.)
The peace-and-comfort-loving little Hobbit, drawn despite himself into Professor Tolkien’s finely written saga of dwarves and elves, fearsome goblins and trolls, in a spacious country of far-off and long ago, spaciously pictured in the author’s own drawings, goes through all kinds of adventures and ordeals and comes out much the same at the end, but for having proved himself a bit of a hero at a pinch. This is a full-length tale of traditional magic beings (but for the Hobbit himself, through whom the modern child may enter their world) and their animal allies, with a fiery dragon full-sized and portentous. The quest of the dragon’s treasure – rightfully the dwarves’ treasure – makes an exciting epic of travel, magical adventure, and, working up to a devastating climax, war. Not a story for pacifist children. Or is it?