From the hobbit-hole: The Lord of the Rings fanzines of the 1960s and archival limitations

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which fan archives, particularly physical archives of pre-internet fan artefacts, offer a limited perspective of fan participation based on conditions of access to fan community and production means. Using 1960s fan magazines dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy that emerged in the early days of US-based fandom, this research demonstrates that analysis of the content of these fanzines is most significant to fan studies when it considers factors of publication such as who had access to printing materials, funding and the social conditions of the 1960s that would have privileged specific fan voices over others. I argue that archives that fail to take factors such as these into account help to perpetuate notions of acceptable fandom as practised by White fans. The fandom presented in the pages of The Lord of the Rings fanzines, as presented by their political statements or lack of, shows how fandom interests change when fandoms move from heavily concentrated spaces, fanzines, to broader and more accessible spaces such as the internet.