Tolkien & the Silmarillion | 
pickThis is a lovely little book, covering Kilby's stay with the Tolkiens in the summer of 1965, invited by JRRT to give him "editorial and critical assistance", and an impetus to focus on his authorial task at a time when age and the distractions of a fame to which he was ambivalent combined with a natural dilatoriness and a tendency for his interests to be "Like butter that has been scraped over too much bread". His personal impressions of ?
Next up, a memoir of Kilby's summer assisting JRRT with his Silmarillion materials, after which he was asked to read the manuscript prior to publication. Kilby's book was published 1976, the year before The Silmarillion, so his impressions will be personal & unaffected by its general & critical reception.
Kilby was an Inkling scholar, with several academic books about Tolkien, Lewis and the others, so I'm also expecting it to be well-considered.
He goes onto a sketch of the composition of the Silmarillion, something that Christopher Tolkien later greatly expanded upon, then a consideration of how Tolkien's Christianity is embedded in his work, not as deliberately as that of C.S. Lewis but as a natural effect of his deep belief, and rounds up with a consideration of the three major Inklings, JRRT, Lewis and Charles Williams.
Lovely! 😊 7d