Tolkien fandom Tolkien fandom Tolkien fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially of the Middle-earth legendarium which includes "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion". "Fandom" is a term used to describe a specific type of fan subculture. "Tolkien fandom" in this sense sprang up in the United States in the 1960s, in the context of the hippie movement, to the dismay of the author (Tolkien died in 1973), who talked of "my deplorable cultus". A Tolkienist is someone who studies the work of J. R. R. Tolkien: this
J. R. R. Tolkien Award for Best Fantasy novel in 1978. In 1980 Christopher Tolkien published a collection of more fragmentary material, under the title "Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth". In subsequent years (1983–1996) he published a large amount of the remaining unpublished materials, together with notes and extensive commentary, in a series of twelve volumes called "The History of Middle-earth". They contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative, and outright contradictory accounts, since they were always a work in progress for Tolkien and he only rarely settled on a definitive version for any of the stories. There is not complete consistency between "The Lord of