These cover topics such as medieval poetry, the American short story, or the British and Irish novel; and major authors such as Mark Twain, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare.

[4] J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

[10] The first part, a single chapter, is a brief biography by John Garth, summarising the diverse elements of Tolkien's life from the youthful Tea Club and Barrovian Society and wartime experience to lexicography, Oxford, The Hobbit, and his other writings.

[12] The third part contains fourteen contributions, by Gergely Nagy, John D. Rateliff, Verlyn Flieger and others on the complex body of stories, many times rewritten, that make up his Middle-earth corpus.

[13] The fourth part consists of ten essays, including those by Elizabeth Solopova on Middle English, David Bratman on Tolkien's place among the Inklings, and Dimitra Fimi's look at his impact on fantasy fiction.

[1][15] The work is illustrated with a few tables in the text, and in the "Art" essay by Christopher Tuthill, present in the final section, nine monochrome reproductions of fantasy artworks by major Tolkien artists such as Alan Lee, John Howe, and Ted Nasmith.

[1] The scholar of literature and curator of rare books Cait Coker, in her review for Extrapolation, wrote that the discipline of Tolkien studies had come of age, from being the "bad boy" of academic inquiry into science fiction and fantasy.