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J. R. R. Tolkien The book also includes the previously unpublished "Sellic Spell" and two versions of "The Lay of Beowulf". The former is a fantasy piece on Beowulf's biographical background, while the latter is a poem on the Beowulf theme. "The Story of Kullervo", first published in "Tolkien Studies" in 2010 and reissued with additional material in 2015, is a retelling of a 19th-century Finnish poem. It was written in 1915 while Tolkien was studying at Oxford. "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien" is one of the oldest and most often revised in Tolkien's legendarium. The story is one of three contained within