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There is a collection of Tolkien's letters available in book form. Has anyone come across it?

You mean this 600 - pages - thing?

Yep, I have it it's great to read, VERY interesting letters, most of them pretty long.... they give an excellent portray of Tolkien as a person and also the political situation during his time and stuff like that... and loads of fascinating material about Middle-earth because he answered loads of fanmail with quite long explanations.
It's also where for example the basics for the reconstruction of the quenya noun grammar can be found

Its also where you can learn to forge his signature from

Does it have anything relating to criticism on his work?

Probably....

Criticism? Well, he comments some criticism made by others (who usually misunderstood something...)
Mainly by publishers though

Alot of so called critics arrogantly dismissed his fantasy work. There isn't a large amount of merit there.

Critics just say what other critics do

yeah. But I've come across some real rubbish posing as criticism on Tolkien. I doubt the so called critics had ever glanced at his writing!

Must have done

Yea, you sometimes get the impression that they have no idea what LoTR is about and that somebody just told them the names about the main characters, and the rest -

... yea, the letters have some of Tolkien's comments on strange criticism... also his commentation of a planned film of LoTR quite interesting to read

It answers some of the main questions that are asked all the time in the forums

One critic confused Bilbo and Frodo!

Thats insane