Was Lord of the Rings really that popular back then? The Peter Jackson movie didn’t exist and all there were was the novel and the Ralph Bashki version. Don’t get me wrong the novel is one of my favorite novels of all time but was it as mainstream as Stranger Things seems to suggest?
shareMy bro was big into D&D back then... ish... Maybe it was more early 90s, but still... I honestly don't remember him (or LOTR) being on my radar at all back then. In fact, I don't even think I'd heard of it until the first movie came out. But then, I'm really not a fan of those types of movies.
shareLord of the Rings was a big deal back in the 60's and 70's.
I remember checking the book out in the library to see what
it was all about, but all I remember are these endless scenes
of hobbits sitting around blowing smoke rings that would do
all kinds of weird stuff. I just got tired of it. Never read any
more or watched the movies.
I read it in the late 70s. I thought it was okay (I preferred Robert E Howard), but a lot of my mates were religiously obsessed with it. That continued for a good five or six years. The books were always in stock in every large bookshop. It had a very dedicated fanbase.
shareI won't provide research, but I'd say the books were about as popular as the Harry Potter books were in their time. Just the books, now. Any young person who read, likely went through a sci-fi/fantasy phase, and iirc LotR was the most popular series in the genre for a good chunk of time, including the 80s. IIRC, I think I had read them twice by my teens, which were in the 80s.
shareIt was popular amongst the sort of kids who sometimes read books or played Dungeons and Dragons, so quite a few liked it but it wasn't as widely popular as something like Star Wars or even Star Trek. I saw the animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies, and was disappointed that it ended in the middle of the story and was never finished. I got around to reading the books in high school and enjoyed them, though I wasn't as fanatical about them as some.
That's my memory of it.
Nope. A couple friends read the hobbit, but that's about it.
shareIt was certainly very popular among the sorts of kids who played Dungeons and Dragons, as well as literary, intellectual adults. It was assigned in college courses, and read by most every intellectual at some point in their teens or early 20s.
The Bakshi animated film definitely made it popular amongst kids in the late '70s and early '80s.