The US paperbacks of Tolkien's books led to the popularization of fantasy

JRR Tolkien redefined fantasy for a new generation

Tolkien’s debut novel, 1937’s “The Hobbit,” was aimed at young adults, yet it felt far more serious than the whimsical tales of Lewis Carroll or L. Frank Baum. "What Tolkien does is take the 'otherworld' fantasy developed in the 19th century and makes it child-sized, melding it with folklore and Norse myth," notes Farah Mendlesohn, the author of “Rhetorics of Fantasy.”

In 1974, 'Dungeons and Dragons' turned fantasy into a game

Inspired by the fantasy paperback explosion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published the original incarnation of the game, which immersed players in worlds similar to fantasy fiction. Since then, several newer editions have been released. In recent years, podcasts and livestreams featuring individuals playing the game have gained popularity.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was the first major American fantasy novel

Baum blended elements of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Lewis Carroll, placing them in an American context. The illustrations of William Wallace Denslow brought the fantastical elements to life, as seen below. The book was an instant smash hit, selling out its initial 10,000-book pressing within the first eight months. By the time it entered the public domain in 1956, it had sold 3 million copies.

One writer believes fantasy is a form of realism

The literary genre has become massively popular in the 2020s, turning a previously marginal form into a mainstream concern. Spufford, a literary novelist who grew up loving books that explored fantastic worlds, argues that fantasy is so popular because it so accurately reflects the real world.

'Harry Potter’ transformed the young adult publishing industry

The series’ success reshaped the market for youth fiction. In 1997, about 3,000 young adult titles were published annually. By 2009, that number soared to 30,000 as publishers chased the next major phenomenon.

The word ‘fantasy’ wasn't used to describe the genre until the 20th century

The word—at least as a word used to describe fiction—didn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1949. Scholars believe that’s due to the arrival of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, an influential publication, and the rise in fantasy’s popularity following World War II.

A book series aimed at World War II soldiers helped popularize works like 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Of Mice and Men.'

Tolkien's grandson says 'Lord of the Rings' was influenced by WWI

JRR Tolkien fought in World War I, an experience his grandson, Simon Tolkien, says informed the fantasy legend’s famous trilogy. The companionship between Frodo and Sam and Sauron’s pervasive evil, according to the younger Tolkien, were directly influenced by time on the battlefield.

Fan fiction has slowly become a part of mainstream publishing

In 2025, the SenLinYu fantasy novel "Alchemised," which began as "Harry Potter" fan fiction, became a bestseller after being traditionally published; its movie rights were sold for over $3M. The mainstreaming of the genre is due to a combination of factors, including publishing's interest in the hard metrics that fan fiction websites provide.

Early English fantasy writers built on horror and Gothic texts

After the success of 19th-century books like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” readers were eager for more stories that deviated from realism. Early 20th-century texts like George MacDonald’s “Phantastes” and Lord Dunsany’s “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” met the moment, laying the groundwork for the fantasy genre.

Consumers are buying more books now than they were 20 years ago

Interest in reading spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and has continued building since then. The romance and fantasy genres in particular have been especially popular, with titles celebrated on BookTok, a wing of TikTok dedicated to reading, spurring the craze.

The calendars of the 'Lord of the Rings'

JRR Tolkien's epic fantasy trilogy "The Lord of the Rings" is a seminal work in the history of literature partly due to its creator's obsessive focus on systematic detail—including the calendars used in the world. Take a fantastic dive into the minutiae of Tolkien's creation by learning the different approaches to time organization in the Shire or Rivendell with this dense, comprehensive resource based on Tolkien's appendices.

The first ‘Harry Potter’ book was retitled for US readers

Scholastic changed "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" to "Sorcerer’s Stone" in 1998, fearing the original title sounded too academic and might confuse American readers unfamiliar with the word’s magical meaning.

Mass market paperbacks were originally designed to fit in your pocket

These books were supposed to cost no more than a pack of cigarettes and had a huge reach thanks to their affordable price. The pocket-sized paperbacks are now going extinct due to the convenience of downloading reading materials on smartphones and other shifts in the publishing industry.

How 'Star Wars' changed science fiction

The popularity of "Star Wars" shifted the market away from the more literary, and sometimes cynical, science fiction of the 1960s and '70s. In the wake of George Lucas' space opera, publishers and studios wanted similarly optimistic adventure stories. In time, though, writers like William Gibson would react against that and, in turn, create the "cyber punk" subgenre.

In 1996, King had 6 books on the New York Times bestseller list

Stephen King has been wildly popular for decades, but he was never more visible than in the 1990s—especially for one week in 1996. All six volumes of the serialized novel "The Green Mile" appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Reading the article not only provides some context for King's ubiquity, but also hints at what would become a norm in publishing: a few big-name authors dominating the charts with their popular series. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The printing press spread novels widely

Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440 changed how writing was reproduced. It allowed multiple manuscripts to be copied via movable type rather than by hand, making more literature more widely available. Over time, that change caused literacy rates to rise, creating a market for even more literature.

Horror exploded as a commercial literary genre in the late 1960s

Ira Levin’s 1967 novel “Rosemary’s Baby” showed publishers horror was a viable commercial genre. That was proven again in 1971, with William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” and again in 1974 with Stephen King’s “Carrie.” The books dealt with societal fears (the occult, drugs, sex) during a time of political upheaval.

As ‘Game of Thrones’ grew more popular, its fans grew more critical

George RR Martin's “A Song of Ice and Fire” series began in 1996 as a series of fantasy novels and gained popularity in the 2010s through the TV series “Game of Thrones.” As the series gained more viewers, fans and critics grew more critical of the show, with particular vitriol reserved for the series finale.

A sample of quirky medieval era-book titles

The medieval book publishing industry wasn't quite so robust as our modern era's, but the mystical and satirical tomes coming out at that time still needed a name. Peruse this list of some of the quirkier of those titles, which reflects the era's literalness, theological interest, and downright silliness.

He made a name with a short story about jumping frogs

Twain’s first big break came with “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” a fictitious story that appeared in a 1865 edition of the New York Saturday Press. (When it was republished elsewhere, the title was changed to “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”) That year, American poet James Russell Lowe called it “the finest piece of humorous literature yet produced in America.”

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

A 1954 Senate subcommittee investigated the comics industry

Comic books were wildly popular in the '50s, especially with children, whom some politicians believed were being corrupted by crime and horror comics. A subcommittee convened and eventually determined that “this Nation cannot afford the calculated risk involved in the continued mass dissemination of crime and horror comic books to children.” The government didn't endorse censorship, but the comics industry did, creating its own Comics Code Authority.

'Fahrenheit 451' is a perennially banned dystopian story

This late-in-life interview with Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” details the book’s origins, providing background for one of the most popular titles in dystopian literature. As a book lover, Bradbury was horrified by the book burnings of Nazi Germany and imagined a version of the United States where firemen were censors, protecting their fellow citizens from literature’s harmful ideas. “We are a democracy of readers,” Bradbury explains. “And we should keep it that way.”

Rockwell's 'Four Freedoms' raised millions for the US war effort

Rockwell initially pitched the "Four Freedoms" project to the US Ordnance Department, but was rejected. Rockwell's editor at the Saturday Evening Post, however, loved the idea and published the images across four consecutive issues. After they became a sensation, the Saturday Evening Post partnered with the US Department of the Treasury to send the paintings on a 16-date national tour, which raised $133M in war bonds and stamps. Meanwhile, the Office of War Information printed four million sets of the posters with "Buy War Bonds" emblazoned on them.

Theos Bernard's book on yoga formalized the practice for many Americans

His 1943 book “Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience” was supposedly based on a 1936 trip through India and Tibet, though it’s believed many of the details were fabricated. Still, the book featured photos of Bernard in numerous postures that were some of the first published in the US, helping to popularize yoga in America.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

About 12.5% of US adults experience a phobia in their lifetime, a diagnosis that hinges on the intense fear interfering with daily life and persisting for at least six months.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.