Predictable Matt, you may already be aware of this, but if not I thought you (and perhaps others) might be interested in David Haden's recent post (link below) on Frank Magill's appreciation of LOTR. My brief attempt at a Google Books search also aligns with Haden's suggestion that these comments were also present in the 1958 "Masterplots" volume not just the 1969 "Masterpieces" volume.

https://potbanks.wordpress.com/2024/03/02/15064/

A very cool focus. Well done!

Tuor son of Huor wrote:

@predictablematt, you may already be aware of this, but if not I thought you (and perhaps others) might be interested in David Haden's recent post (link below) on Frank Magill's appreciation of LOTR. My brief attempt at a Google Books search also aligns with Haden's suggestion that these comments were also present in the 1958 "Masterplots" volume not just the 1969 "Masterpieces" volume.

https://potbanks.wordpress.com/2024/03/02/15064/

Thank you, this was indeed interesting. The Magill entries from 1969 are annotated in George Thomson's bibliographies published in Mythlore, and are cited (with no annotation) in Judith Johnson. These don't have any mention of content from 1958. I may have to do some digging myself on that! He mentions On Fairy-stories which was referred to by pre-Tree and Leaf reviewers and critics, though quite rarely.

I'm grateful to be able to read the entire content - I had looked at buying the Magill volume in order to read these, but couldn't justify such a weighty tome for so little content!