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Tolkien hits the best-seller lists again..and again

November 04, 2001 at 15:23:27

Publisher's Weekly is listing J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit at number 4 and The Fellowship of the Ring at number 14 in its list of top 15 mass market books for the week ending November 3.

Reuters has published the list here:

http://in.news.yahoo.com/011103/14/184qn.html

The books became a mass market phenomenon in the mid-1960s after ACE Books published an unauthorized edition. Tolkien scrambled to update both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings so that he could secure proper copyright protection in the United States, where Donald Wolheim (then of ACE Books) had taken advantage of a loophole to publish the unauthorized editions. ACE succumbed to public pressure to withdraw the editions and pay Tolkien belated royalties.

Sales of Tolkien-related books are zooming as anticipation for "The Fellowship of the Ring", the first of three movies based on The Lord of the Rings filmed by Peter Jackson in New Zealand, builds to a fever pitch. The movie opens in London on December 10 at an invitation-only premier and world-wide distribution begins on December 19.

Rumors have been flying about whether a "Hobbit" movie will be filmed. Jackson reportedly filmed some scenes from The Hobbit to relate how Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist for the earlier story, acquired the One Ring from Gollum, one of the chief antagonists in The Lord of the Rings.