Richard C. West (1944–2020)

Tolkien scholar Richard C West died of COVID-19 on November 29 in Madison, Wisconsin.

He was the editor of the book Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist (Kent State, 1970), co-winner of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies (1976). He contributed essays to numerous books and journals about Tolkien and fantasy, and served on the board of editors for the journal Extrapolations.

Richard helped found Tolkien and Fantasy Society at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1966, and also founded a Tolkien book discussion group which met continuously for more than fifty years. He was a founding member of The Madison Science Fiction Group, and one of the founders of the feminist science fiction convention, WisCon. He published the pioneering Tolkien fanzine / journal Orcrist, 8 issues from 1966 to 1977, with an anniversary 9th issue in 2017.

This is just the beginning of a list of his accomplishments. There is an extensive bibliography on Tolkien Gateway.

“A modest and kindly man, I don’t think Richard ever realized that he was one of the best of the best of Tolkien scholars,” John D. Rateliff, another leading Tolkien specialist, said of West today.

West was retired as Serials and Technical Services Librarian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He married Harriet Perri Corrick in May 1977 in Madison, WI. Perri currently has COVID-19 as well but is not as ill.