Joseph Pearce, in the book “Tolkien: Man and Myth” tells how, in a 1997 poll, English readers voted J.R.R. Tolkien’s, “The Lord of the Rings,” the book of the century. The literati were embarrassed by their fellow-countrymen. In a nation that produced the likes of George Eliot, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, and William Thackeray — to name a few — how could the masses choose a fantasy for adolescents as the book of the century? [...]
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