TORN recently came up with a list of the "Top Fifty People in Tolkien History" in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of LotR. To see this list, click
here.
They do not give us any idea what criteria they used to compile these names, but they are presumably the fifty individuals and/or groups who, in their view, have contributed the most to Tolkien in a personal or literary sense as well as those who have helped to spread knowledge and understandings of his writings. The compiler of the list cautions us in this way:
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These entries may not be in the exact order you feel they ought to be in, so PLEASE do not email me telling me what a horrid person I am.
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The compiler's statement about "exact order" suggests that, although we should not pay attention to the strict order of each item, the most "important" persons and groups will appear closer to the top of the list.
This listing is very eclectic. Some are contemporaries of the author who had a personal or professional influence on him; others are eminent medieval and/or Tolkien scholars, artists, musicians, or various individuals associated with any of the movie adaptations.
Esty - If this is not the correct forum for such an eclectic mix, please move to where you think it would fit in better. I suppose that one of the reasons I have placed this in Books is because I feel that any compilation assessing fifty years of "history" should be more concerned with the Books themselves, their sources and influences, rather than any cinematic, artistic, or musical adaptations.
Are there names you would have included that do not appear, or should others have been left out? If so, why? Would you have ranked certain names higher (or lower) than they currently appear? Additionally, do you have a problem with the way any of these particular people are described?
A few personal comments out of the many that came to my mind..... This is a popular list compiled on a popular movie website. A number of the entries make sense, while others definitely do not.
The list of scholars seems "quirky". Why list Wayne Hammond, Douglas Anderson, Michael Drout, Jane Chance and David Salo but leave out Shippey and Flieger and Carl Hostetter? I would argue that the latter three were actually more important in initially bringing academic recognition and respectability to the professor. Actually, I would include Anderson and Hammond on the list based on their definitive descriptive bibliography (done jointly), Anderson's Annotated Hobbit, and, once it comes out in the next few months, Hamond's new guide, which is supposed to be different in scope and nature than anything that has gone before. Drout and Chance just don't belong there, at least yet. Drout is just getting started on editing Tolkien's "lost" Beowulf manuscript and Chance is a good scholar but not in the same category as the others. (She actually lives here in Houston.)
Jackson and Walsh listed as number one? Please, no! I am not a movie basher, and I know that this website is geared to the films, but I would move them down to the middle. And possibly there are others who would place them even lower?
And how about that final listing? Whatever I may personally think about these books, I see no relevance to Tolkien and his writings.