Yes, Tolkien is Wonderful, but...

[Boromir88]

This being a topic mostly of opinion, there is really no correct answer, it's just going to be a big circle of opinions. Though, I really don't know what you are trying to achieve with this thread...

A lot of this great literature comes under the musty title of "classic". Titles like "The Iliad", "War and Peace", "Great Expectations", "Les Miserables", and others come to mind. They strike us as impressive, inaccessible, and dull.~Iarwain

I would say most of the people on this forum, being fans of Tolkien, also would rather enjoy many of the authors that are on that list. (I could be completely wrong, so, if I am just tell me to shut it ). Now, it's true I've often found Charles Dickens quite a bore, but I guess this really isn't what authors are 'fun' to read, what is the 'intellectual quality?' And Dickens' showing of 'industrialization' was fit for the time he was writing in.

I love George Orwell, and I think you'll notice I mention him several times on this forum. His books are not only scary dystopias, but also absolutely humourous. Mark Twain's work with dialects is about as impressive as Tolkien's knowledge of language. Chaucer, Fitzgerald, Shakespeare...and most of those on that list, are all great "intellectual" authors, I don't think you'll meet much of a disagreement.

I would also add St. Augustine, who's defining of 'race' is quite interesting. Now Augustine was writing in what...the 400s? But, his writing of mutated half-humans with 5 arms (and all sorts of distorted 'creatures') was fascinating. Also, Jane Yolen's work on fairy tales is unique. Where is Terry Pratchett? A poll in England showed that the 'most influential authors who are still living,' Pratchett was second, behind J.K. Rowling. So, there are a couple more I would add to that list.

And there are a couple I would take off...T.S. Eliot for example, who writes very morbid stuff, but of course that's not the reason I would take him off. But, as Tom Shippey observes, Eliot really had no clue what he was writing about, as he didn't have first hand experience:

Yet actually , when it comes to it, Tolkien wasn't like that himself......the failure of nerve which afflicted so many of his contemporaries, just didn't reach him. After all, he'd been there, [WW1],he'd seen what it was like. T.S. Eliot, to name but one, hadn't been there, and hadn't seen what it was like, and Tolkien didn't take any notice of Eliot and his like. He was dead sure that they were wrong on his own firsthand evidence...~Tom Shippey's sheech to the Tolkien Society's Annual dinner (1991)

With regards to Eliot, this is something I will agree with Professor Shippey and Tolkien on, that his bleak vision of the world (caused by WW1) is quite a ways off; and Eliot lacked that first hand experience with the war that Tolkien went through.

I'll conclude with, as much as Tolkien 'ripped into' authors of fantasy (we all know his criticism of C.S. Lewis - and Lewis wasn't Tolkien's only casualty ), I doubt Tolkien would put himself on the pedestal that most of us here (including myself) put him on. Tolkien, and his 'eccentric group of friends,' seemed far from the type that would lift themselves up on a pedestal. With that being said 'Middle-earth' is just a small fraction of what Tolkien wrote; we must not forget all the work he did in academics as well! I think (though I'm going to have to go back and check who said it), Tom Shippey remarks again that some in the academic world didn't like 'Middle-earth' because it took him out of the academic world.

As an interesting story, when Penguin Books changed Tolkien's spelling of 'elvish' and 'dwarves' (to 'elfish' and 'dwarfs') they cited the Oxford English Dictionary. Which Tolkien replied 'I wrote the Oxford Dictionary!' Now that's Tolkien being a little silly, but it all goes back to C.S. Lewis' comments in Tolkien's obituary: 'he was a man inside language.'