How is that last one? I haven't seen it.
Definitely interesting.
It has a total of eleven essays by twelve
authors (one is a collaboration by two authors), including one by Fisher himself (besides his preface). Besides
Tom Shippey and John D. Rateliff, I had not read anything by any of the other authors, and had only heard respectively read
about Thomas Honegger, one of Germany's JRRT experts and a professor of medieval studies at the university in the
city of Jena in Thuringia.
Fisher's preface and the first three essays take up the point about JRRT's stated disapproval of exactly what the book covers and defends source criticism (Shippey taking a philological tack, as might be expected). It kind of boils down to JRRT's also well-known "cordial dislike" of allegory - if done improperly. Both allegory and source criticism can be done properly, and Fisher's own essay shows how, but also warns against pitfalls that all too many take.
Then there are four essays about historical sources: Mesopotamia and the Bible, astronomy in classical legends, Goths and Langobards and Byzantium,
Rohirrim as Anglo-Saxons (yes, if you add Goths to the mixture).
Then three writers, William Caxton (a 15th-cetury author / compiler), H. Rider Haggard, and John Buchan, the latter two acknowledged by JRRT himself as excellent modern writers.
The last essay studies what biographical matters may have found their way into JRRT's writing.