How Hippies Saved the Lord of the Rings

Once upon a time, the Lord of the Rings was a little known book written by a stodgy British professor. We have hippies, Beatle fans, and slimy publishers to thank for the cultural phenomenon it is today.

*Correction*: I misrepresented the anecdote about TheOneRing.net founder sneaking onto the LotR set. She already lived in NZ, and only wrote a joking article about sneaking onto set. She was issued a restraining order by overly zealous studio execs, something later corrected by Peter Jackson and his team, when they welcomed her to set. Sorry about the confusion!

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Sources:
Liptak, Andrew. “Looking Back on What Made the Lord of the Rings Trilogy Special, 15 Years Later.” The Verge, 23 Dec. 2016,
Resnik, Henry. “The Hobbit-Forming World of J.R.R. Tolkien.” Saturday Evening Post, 2 July 1966.
Ripp, Joseph. “Middle America Meets Middle-Earth: American Discussion and Readership of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, 1965-1969.” Book History, vol. 8, no. 1, 2005, pp. 245–286.