J. R. R. Tolkien in his lifetime, and was sometimes harshly disapproving. In 1946, he rejected suggestions for illustrations by Horus Engels for the German edition of "The Hobbit" as "too Disnified ... Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of". Tolkien was sceptical of the emerging Tolkien fandom in the United States, and in 1954 he returned proposals for the dust jackets of the American edition of "The Lord of the Rings": He had dismissed dramatic representations of fantasy in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", first presented in 1939: Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien illustrated manuscript, with a typeset transcription on each facing page. More recently, in 2007, "The Children of Húrin" was published by HarperCollins (in the UK and Canada) and Houghton Mifflin (in the US). The novel tells the story of Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor, children of Húrin Thalion. The material was compiled by Christopher Tolkien from "The Silmarillion", "Unfinished Tales", "The History of Middle-earth", and unpublished manuscripts. "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún", which was released worldwide on 5 May 2009 by HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, retells the legend of Sigurd and the fall of the Niflungs from