J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, was nominated for the 1961 Nobel Prize in Literature by C.S. Lewis. The Swedish Academy awarded the prize to Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić.
Journalist Andreas Ekström, who examined the 1961 records when they became accessible in January 2012, reported that committee member Anders Österling had written that Tolkien’s prose “has not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality.”
The official nomination archive confirms Lewis’s nomination of Tolkien. Other nominees that year included Graham Greene, Robert Frost, E.M. Forster and Lawrence Durrell. Nobel information is subject to a 50-year confidentiality period.
Andrić, whose works included The Bridge on the Drina, received the prize “for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country.”
A divided early reception
The Lord of the Rings appeared in three volumes between 1954 and 1955. The Fellowship of the Ring was published in July 1954, followed four months later by The Two Towers. The Return of the King followed in 1955.
The work developed from a proposed sequel to The Hobbit into a fantasy narrative for adults, drawing on Tolkien’s invented languages and the histories of Middle-earth. Its publication brought sharply differing assessments from literary critics.
In a review dated January 22, 1956, poet W.H. Auden described the book as “a masterpiece of its genre.” He praised the detail of its imaginary world and history, while acknowledging that some readers whose literary judgment he respected could not abide it.
Edmund Wilson offered a contrasting assessment in an April 14, 1956 review. He criticized Tolkien’s narrative technique and characterization, and challenged Auden’s enthusiasm. “Prose and verse are on the same level of professorial amateurishness,” Wilson wrote.
These reviews document a disagreement over Tolkien’s literary merits several years before his Nobel nomination. Auden valued the combination of a heroic quest with a detailed historical and social setting; Wilson found the storytelling and style inadequate.
Lewis’s support for Tolkien
Lewis’s nomination followed years of encouragement and public advocacy. The two writers met as Oxford colleagues and shared an interest in northern myths and legends. They were members of the Inklings, a group whose gatherings included readings and discussion of works in progress.
Lewis helped encourage Tolkien to complete The Lord of the Rings. In his 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring, he praised the invented world’s geography, languages, mythology and sense of history. He also rejected the characterization of the book as an overgrown children’s story.
Lewis emphasized the historical depth of Middle-earth, describing its characters as “at once stricken and upheld by the memory of vanished civilizations and lost splendour.”
