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He basically lifted images, characters and whple scenes -.often without even bothering to change the names (cf the dwarf names in TH)
Pleeze. Lifted "characters" by borrowing 1000-year old names? Care to tell us how Thorin, Bifur, Dori and the rest are "characters" from The Prophecy of the Sybil?
Whole scenes? Really? Anything more substantial than Bilbo's lifting of a cup a la Beowulf?
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A great part of the Estate's remit is quality control. When a book is issued under the JRRT monogram- effectively the Estate's imprimatur - the book can be assumed right off the bat to be *good:* Shippey, Hammond & Scull, Garth, Rateliff: all printed with the Seal of Approval, and all representing the very best in Tolkien scholarship. The Estate doesn't license just any old crap (unlike Zaentz/Wingnut).
The "Mirkwood" novel was tripe, and I cannot blame the Estate for not wanting to provide a Nihil Obstat, any more than I blame them for blocking "sequels" and other fan-fic.
The Estate *did* btw take action against Grotta-Kurska; the original edition contains blank pages marked (very cattily) "redacted for legal reasons"
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The Estate didn't "suppress" the Hilary biography; it withheld permission to use JRRT's letters, after which the authors decided not to publish without them.
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NB: Tolkien didn't invent hobbits? Please don't go back to that Denham Tract stuff....
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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