Why was LotR obscure at first, then exploded in popularity?

[ringbearer]

Peter S. Beagle wrote (at the beginning of some paperback editions), that some time, circa 1958, that LotR was hard to find(he states it took him 4 years!). Then, during the late 60s and early 70s(...and still today), you cannot find a bookstore that does not stock it! I think that it was that generation, i.e. the "hippy" era (or whatever you choose to call it) that brought it out of obscurity. Escapism was what that generation wanted most.

Any other theories? Why was this story such a "sleeper"!

[Darth Tater]

the sixties. that says it all :p

[Strange-Looking Lurker]

In the 60's, the lines between right and wrong were often blurred. Tolkien was so popular because Middle-Earth was totally seperate from their problems, and there was a definite right and wrong.

[ringbearer]

As I stated in first post on this topic..."Escapism was what that generation wanted most."

I posted this same question on another LotR forum(fogive me Entmoot) and got this, very good, response...

" Ringbearer,
I have thought about this, as well.
I see Tolkien as a man writing ahead of his time. He wrote during an era of turmoil and struggle, an era of work and reason, an era of war and industrialization.
I think it was Carl Jung who wrote that there will come artists from time to time who speak in primordial images, who deal in the mythologies that speak to our souls. Jung believed that when society was in its hour of need, when the Truth has been sundered from us, artists (or Heroes/Heroines) would appear who magically, as a function of their genius, spoke directly to the parts of the soul that most needed feeding, revival, awakening. These artists reconnect society with what it has lost.

I believe that Tolkien functioned within this notion, as well as without. When European and American society caught onto his message, who can say?

Was it society that finally found, or discovered, and "made" Tolkien as popular as he is? Or was it Tolkien who primed, or gave, the sheeple both the legend and the map, and then finally society learned again how to "read"?

It is an involved question. All things aside, Tolkien came to me just in time. And that has made all the difference...not some path in a yellow wood.

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Any other ideas?

[Rána Eressëa]

Good ol' escapism. We all know it. :D