What do Brigid Brophy, G. D. H. Cole, William de Morgan, Nigel Dennis, William Gerhardie, Richard Hughes, Ann Jellico, Alun Lewis, Robert Nichols, T. F. Powys, Jon Silkin, May Sinclair,  J. C. Squire, Andrew Young and Francis Young have in common? The most obvous answer is that almost nobody has heard of any of them. The next answer is that they are all British literary figures of the twentieth century. The third and most scandalous answer is that they all warrant more space in The Oxford Companion to English Literature (5th edition) than does a certain J. R. R. Tolkien.

Astonishingly Tolkien warrants only thirteen meagre and no doubt begrudged lines in this compendious tome, edited by Margaret Drabble, that is considered an authoritative text on who’s who amongst the English literati.

Here’s another interesting question: What do the novels Lord Jim, Lord of the Flies, The Lord of the Isles, and Lord Ormont and his Aminta have in common? The answer is that all of them have a larger entry in The Oxford Companion to English Literature than does The Lord of the Rings. Conrad’s Lord Jim has forty lines dedicated to it, Golding’s Lord of the Flies has thirteen lines, Sir Walter Scott’s Lord of the Isles boasts seventeen lines, and Meredith’s Lord Ormont and his Aminta is represented by eighteen lines. One could quibble at the oddity of Conrad’s novel warranting more than twice the space of Sir Walter Scott’s but such niceties pale into insignificance when compared to the insulting and derisory entry for The Lord of the Rings. The work that has been consistently voted as the greatest work of the twentieth century, and which has probably sold many times more copies than the other four novels put together, gets a sneeringly miserly three words! And those words merely state that the reader should “See Tolkien, J. R. R.”.

Incidentally, while we’re looking at the evident absurdities of this decidedly prejudiced Companion, it is interesting to note that C. S. Lewis (22 lines) warrants less space than Sinclair Lewis (28 lines) and barely more space than Alun Lewis (20 lines), the latter of whom published only one volume of verse before his death.

What is one to make of this? It confirms, were confirmation necessary, that the self-styled literati have a supercilious disdain for the works of Tolkien and Lewis and refuse to afford them the place that any objective observer would conclude that they obviously merit. There is, however, a happy ending to this sorry tale. The fact is that Tolkien, as a writer, and The Lord of the Rings, as the greatest work of the twentieth century, are far larger than the literati that despise them, and will outlive The Oxford Companion to English Literature. In the interim, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, and its editor, simply look very silly in refusing to give due credit to this towering genius and his masterpiece. The last laugh belongs to Tolkien.