This is an auction for BEOWULF AND THE CRITICS by J R R Tolkien.

Amazon.com review:

"The most important essay in the history of Beowulf scholarship, J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf, The Monsters & the Critics, has rightly been much studied and discussed. But scholars of both Beowulf and Tolkien have to this point been unaware that Tolkien's essay was a abbreviated version of a much longer and more substantive work. BEOWULF AND THE CRITICS, which Tolkien wrote in the 1930s and probably delivered as a series of Oxford lectures. This volume presents both unpublished versions of Tolkien's lecture (A and B), each substantially different from the other and from the final, published essay. The edition includes a description of the manuscript, complete textual and explanatory notes, and a detailed critical introduction that explains the place of Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon scholarship both in the history. BEOWULF AND THE CRITICS will be of interest not only to Anglo Saxonists, but also to scholars of Tolkien's works and general readers. Long out of print, this is a beautifully crafted piece of rhetoric. It is as insightful and readable a critical commentary as one is likely to find in medieval studies or literary criticism in general."

From Wikipedia:

"John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE FRSL (1892 – 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959..."

More on Wikipedia.

Hardback 2005.

461 pages.

The cost of shipping is $6.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Palmerston North following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.