Page "Donald A. Wollheim" Paragraph 19

He called Professor Tolkien in 1964 and asked if he could publish Lord of the Rings as Ace paperbacks.

Tolkien said he would never allow Lord of the Rings, his great work, to appear in ' so degenerate a form ’ as the paperback book.

Don was one of the fathers of the entire paperback industry.

He'd spearheaded the Ace line, he was the originating editor-in-chief of the Avon paperback list in 1945, and I think he was hurt and took it personally.

He did a little research and discovered a loophole in the copyright.

Houghton Mifflin, Tolkien ’ s American hardcover publisher, had neglected to protect the work in the United States.

So, incensed by Tolkien ’ s response, he realized that he could legally publish the trilogy and did.

This brash act ( which ultimately benefited his primary competitors as well as Tolkien ) was really the Big Bang that founded the modern fantasy field, and only someone like my father could have done that.

He did pay Tolkien, and he was responsible for making not only Tolkien but Ballantine Books extremely wealthy.

And if he hadn ’ t done it, who knows when — or if — those books would have been published in paperback.