The Tolkien Reader

The Tolkien Reader is an anthology of works by J. R. R Tolkien. It includes a variety of short stories, poems, a play and some non-fiction. Most of these works appeared in journals, magazines, or books years before the publication of The Tolkien Reader. It compiles material previously published as three separate shorter books (Tree and Leaf, Farmer Giles of Ham, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil), together with one additional piece and introductory material. The collection has connections to Tolkien's trilogy The Lord of the Rings.Summarize the following text using ONLY facts from it. Do NOT invent references, emails, or links. If the text doesn't mention something, leave it out. The book was published in 1966 by Ballantine Books in the USA. It is generally considered to be a light, comical read in which Tolkien “laughs good-humoredly at much that is taken most seriously by his epic.” Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon in Oxford at the time, and scholars assert that Tolkien wrote Farmer Giles Of Ham as a mockery of the discipline of philology.