[Teresa Edgerton]

I agree, Polymorphikos, Tolkien could have used a good editor. It appears that by the time the Unwins finally had a completed manuscript in their hands (after all those years, after Tolkien getting miffed about their lack of enthusiasm for the Silmarillion and planning to take the whole project elsewhere) there was no way they were going to send it back for extensive rewrites.

But the fact that he was writing to please himself far more than anyone else is both the strength and the weakness of LOTR. He was drawing, in a very general way, on Norse myth, but he wasn't writing to any formula, or to meet the expectations of any particular group, in fact, he was pretty much going against all the expectations of contemporary readers. Even his friends who heard him read chunks of the story in manuscript had little influence on him -- C. S. Lewis basically said that he was pretty much impervious to influence, that it was possible to encourage him or discourage him, but not to make him do things any differently. The result is a bit unwieldy.

But I can't think of anyone writing fantasy today who isn't writing to appeal to the expectations of contemporary fantasy readers (not to be confused with readers of contemporary fantasy), though in some cases they are aiming for a smaller and more specific segment of the fantasy market.

And that sort of thing generally produces a book that becomes dated much faster than a book that was never trying to be part of a trend to begin with.

In the heat of a book's first popularity is when it's most likely to be "over-rated," not when it's survived the mixed reviews of the literary establishment for half a century, is more popular than when it first came out, and is still attracting and enchanting readers.