In 1970 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was given the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education [REF].
Upon publication it was a critical success,[REF][REF] but later Garner had begun to find fault, referring to it in a 1968 interview as "a fairly bad book" and in 1970 as "one of the worst books published in the last twenty years.. technically.. inept" [REF].