Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien legendarium which includes "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion". Tolkien's "The Hobbit", a children's book, was first published in 1937, and it proved popular. However, "The Lord of the Rings", first published in 1954 through 1955, would give rise to the fandom as a cultural phenomenon. Bootleg paperbacks published by Ace Books eventually found their way into colleges in the US in the 1960s. In response, a revised, authorized edition was published by Ballantine Books. The "hippie" following latched onto the book, giving its own spin to the work's interpretation, such as the Dark Lord Sauron
J. R. R. Tolkien this origin of the name has not been proven. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province in South Africa) to Arthur Reuel Tolkien (1857–1896), an English bank manager, and his wife Mabel, "née" Suffield (1870–1904). The couple had left England when Arthur was promoted to head the Bloemfontein office of the British bank for which he worked. Tolkien had one sibling, his younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien, who was born on 17 February 1894. As a child, Tolkien was bitten by a large baboon spider